A Loaded NBA Draft Debate, Wemby’s Finals Shadow, and Fun MLB Story Lines With Tate Frazier, J. Kyle Mann, and Billy Gil

17:27Tate Frazier:This is the first time we've heard him speak. Myron Metcalf went there, did a nice reported piece and got some actual quotes from Darren Peterson. That's the first time we've heard Peterson speak. Other than that, it's been Bill Self speaking about the situation, rumblings of Adidas putting out different graphics being like the obvious choice for number one pick, right? But it's never been Darren Peterson saying anything. So it's the first time we've heard from him. I do hope that he's doing okay because again, when all the outside noise is around you, it can kind of temper and change who you are a little bit as a person.

17:58Tate Frazier:And I know that's a tough kind of place to be in, but you mentioned it. They were both in Brooklyn there, AJ and Darren. And Brad Stevens is in the building, all the different GMs are there watching them in the practice. And it felt like they were happy to be in Brooklyn. And I do feel like maybe there could be a little bit of a ploy there for them to want to be with the Brooklyn Nets. So if there was any sort of, if I want to buy in and maybe, you know, take a bite of the conspiracy pie there, Brooklyn would be one for those two guys.

18:24Bill Simmons:Yeah. If we were doing conspiracy destinations, it would be Peterson, Brooklyn and AJ in Utah.

18:30Tate Frazier:Yes.

18:31Bill Simmons:Who's been probably helping out funding some of his.

18:34Tate Frazier:They've been funding his career since he was like in 10th grade. Yeah. at this point. Well, so,

18:40Bill Simmons:these kids, I mean, these kids are so young and I have to mention this as a parent of a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old who's watched my kids go through so many different changes and evolutions and up and downs and I can't imagine having a kid in the middle of this process just being dissected like this is nuts. With that said, we have to dissect it because this is one of those you're getting fired if you get this wrong drafts, right? You have the number one pick Like, you DeBansa, let me give you this stat. I nerded it up today. I was checking all this different stuff. First of all, he's averaging 24, 7, and 5 in 40-minute college games.

19:19Bill Simmons:And he's getting better as the year went along. I actually think like his last few games, some of the stuff he's doing is stuff he wasn't doing as comfortably two months ago. there's only three players ever freshman or sophomore who have averaged 24 6 and 4 in a college season and AJ right now is one of the three the other two are Larry Bird and Pete Maravich oh yeah

19:43Tate Frazier:that seems relevant

19:45Bill Simmons:that was Bird's second Indiana State season and then

19:49Tate Frazier:Danny Ainge just passed out as you said that I know

19:53Billy Gil:squirting himself with a spray bottle

19:55Bill Simmons:this is also crazy See, Boozer, who's averaging 23, 10, and four, who's really a good passer, and I can't wait to talk about him. The only freshman, sophomore ever to average 22, 10, and four in a college season are him and Larry Bird. So when you talk about like which draft is better, last year's top four, this year's top four, and Flagg certainly would be in the mix with these guys. And hey, Knippo, you know, has been awesome. And I think I love Harper and I love Edgecombe. Like, I love that draft. the ceiling, would you say, Kyle, like a whiff higher with this 26 class from a superstar standpoint, or would you say it's even?

20:35Billy Gil:Uh, this one as opposed to last year. Yeah. I think this one's higher. Um, but the, the cluster at the top is really good. I mean, gosh, I wanted to say this cause I know we, we, the three of us have this in common, uh, is that from USA basketball, this is one of the most incredible like cluster of players coming into the system at the same time. AJ will have a choice, I think, for which he's been playing for Team USA. He played for, I forget, he played for, anyway. And then Edgecombe, obviously, is not in that group. But on that front, they're really good. Are we done with the basketball side of Darren?

21:07Billy Gil:There were a couple of the things I wanted to add for you.

21:09Bill Simmons:I just wanted to set the stage for everybody. We're talking about three guys that Peterson, from a on-paper standpoint, is just the best guard prospect we've probably had this century since we're going back to Vince Carter. I just don't think we've had somebody who has tools like him from what we saw in the high school stuff. We haven't seen it in Kansas. Yeah. The band says like, I don't like, he just seems like he's 29 years old. And then, and then Boozer. I just, there's any team that he goes to, he'll be able to figure it out and fit in and be good. You can't be like, oh, if he goes there, that'll suck.

21:47Bill Simmons:Like he'll be fine. But Peterson, we just don't see guards like this that are this good and can just get to 25 points without breaking a sweat. What else has impressed you just with the positive stuff in Kansas?

22:00Billy Gil:I wanted to affirm what Tate was saying about him being, and I think that the Adidas thing has kind of played into it where a lot of the guys are on the Nike circuit. Darren was always kind of to the side on the Adidas thing. He was like never, like he wasn't at the hoop summit and they were all there. And it was like, well, this isn't, Peterson's not here. so we're not getting a perfect read on this. But I've always gotten the impression, I think he even has like a Michael Myers tattoo. So he thinks of himself as this stoic, quiet killer. That's how he sees himself. He's absolutely married to like working out.

22:31Billy Gil:He sought out one of the best like shooting player development workout guys when he was in high school. That's what he's about. And it seems like this is probably really all deeply uncomfortable for him. And speaking to like the high school part of it, like you were talking about, everything I got, everything that everybody I've talked to has affirmed that that's what he's about. And the high school tape is very different because I wrote this down. Peterson, the flow of the way that people have thought about him was he was a downhill, crazy athletic explosive guard. And people were like, if he settles for threes, it's not a super win, but it's more of a win than him getting into the paint.

23:04Billy Gil:And in college, you've seen it. The clips really support it. He doesn't have the burst. He doesn't have the explosiveness. We saw little instances of it like in the first half against BYU when he just was like, I'm going to dunk on the whole frigging team. And he did. but this is kind of I wrote this down his shot distribution only 14 % of his shots right now are at the rim and almost 41 % are above the break from three so he's playing like a movement dribble shooter right now when that is not who he is he's like a ball screen operator who can score at all three levels and he's still crazy effective efficient it's just like interfacing it with Kansas hasn't been perfectly seamless and an interesting thing is like Kansas is still really good so if that ever clicks into place they're going to be good So I just think it's been really bumpy, but he's still been a pretty remarkable shot maker.

23:49Billy Gil:One of the more talented shot makers I've ever seen in college, to be honest with you.

23:52Bill Simmons:That college profile you're mentioning, that ties into what we said before about the guy playing pickup and just kind of going back and forth and taking shots and not really trying to not get hurt, basically. But that's what jumps out. if you go back and you watch his high school stuff, Tate, this guy's like a Rose Westbrook kind of like going to the rim, getting into the paint, bouncing off people combined with the shooting. That's what, and the shooting worst case scenario, this guy's going to be like, he'll be the best fourth guy in a starting five of all, you know, just somebody that you can't leave them open.

24:28He'll be fine and he can defend, but there's the ceiling of this is just so much

24:33Bill Simmons:higher. And that's, yeah, I, is there another guard you can remember since you've been following college basketball that has more skills than him?

24:41Tate Frazier:I was going to say Rose to me, it's like, but Rose was so violent to the basket that it's just such a different, like he was so demonstrative and kind of sending the message. And so was John wall where they were just like, watch this, you know what I mean? You've never in Westbrook too. Right. It's like, well, here, here's what I do as a guard. I am going to be a different type of point guard than you've ever seen before. And And Darren seems like, you know, there's the deep end of the pool and he's kind of in the shallow end and he's just kind of like walking around, you know, we're just like, hey, are you going to dive in down there?

25:09Tate Frazier:Like, we want you to dive in and see what you can do. And let's really get into this. And I do feel like this is the first time we've seen Bill Self push him. He had a three in that game and Bill Self kind of like finally got on him to get back on defense. And Peterson looked at the bench like, did he just say something to me? Like he almost gave him a little bit of a death stare. He went to go take me out and then he was like,

25:28Billy Gil:oh, I can't say that right now. Yeah.

25:31Tate Frazier:And to me, like, that will be the best thing to happen to Peterson, where it's like there's no tiptoeing around anymore. Like, you're in the midst of this. You're already in kind of the troubled waters. Let's go ahead and swim. There's time to do this, and there's times not to do this. But, I mean, Embiid had the same agent, and Embiid was trying to get talked out of playing in the NCAA tournament, right? So it's not like Bill Self hasn't dealt with this Adidas situation before. I think he does know how to handle it. and Peterson, as far as like the other guards that come to mind, he is unique and very special in his own way.

26:02Tate Frazier:But I do think that he has more of a gear to get to as far as getting to the rim and getting downhill. And those, yeah, those stats that Kyle was talking about, it's like, let's just go ahead and show that to everybody. Also, like he's playing off guard right now. I think he can be a one at the next level. Council is the one for this team right now. So he's almost playing out of position too, which is another encouraging sign, I guess, because you're like, hey, we can use him in different ways.

26:26Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's interesting when they'll get defensive rebounds. You would think he would always be the one they look for to get the ball, but this team's so loaded. A lot of the times they get a rebound and he just kind of jogs up the court like he knows they don't need him. And it's a really fun team to watch. In a weird way, when he's not on the court, it seems like that lineup is almost like, I don't want to say better, but it's just like they really let loose when he's out. And then when he's in there, they're constantly trying to shoehorn and figure out what he is and what he's doing.

26:58Tate Frazier:They're all looking at him out of the side of their eye like, does Darren want the ball this possession? You know, it's like they're like, do we run our offense or do we give Darren the ball? You know, it does feel like that.

27:06Bill Simmons:Yeah. And sometimes he'll just be like, I'm just going to hang out over here, guys. Well, go to the you nailed it, though.

27:11Billy Gil:I think I think what's interesting about this situation is that like odd as it is that they I think ideally they were going to build this around him is that he's demonstrated something really interesting about his skill set, which is he can play. as a movement shooter and be a dominant pick and roll guy, which is, that is not common. You mentioned Russell Westbrook. If Russell Westbrook could shoot like Darren Peterson, he would have been like a top 10 all-time player. Like, I'm not even joking. He's like, right now, he is 47 % on catch and shoot threes and he's shot a decent amount of them. His mid-range touch is crazy.

27:43Billy Gil:I noted this because I'd watched a lot of clips of him in a row. His shots go through the middle of the basket. This guy has a beautiful arc on his shot. It's just, and he had a couple plays against Steven DeBansa where he was just like, I'm going to make this crazy, crazy contested shot in your face. There's a little Ann Edwards in there. I mean, he's an interesting, he's explosive, like Tate was saying, but very, very skilled.

28:05Bill Simmons:The stoic thing, we've seen stoic guys. That's fine. I'm not worried about that. The cramps part and trying to figure out what's real and not real. What have you been able to find out about that, Kyle? Anything interesting?

28:18Billy Gil:The term full body cramps was sent my way. I asked around about that. What does that even mean? That's like what you get in Mexico when you get food poisoning. I don't know. I got Montezuma's. Yeah, full body cramps.

28:30Bill Simmons:I'm pooping every hour.

28:32Billy Gil:I kind of took that as, I don't know that that's like a medical term as much as maybe there's been cramping in a couple areas and we rounded up to that term because apparently if it's actual full body cramps, that's like a serious medical thing. I think it's probably, there's been some cramps. I don't know if maybe you get into the weeds of like indicting like medical people on staff and things like that. And I'm not qualified to do that, obviously. But I think it's probably, it's contributed to a lot of discomfort for him personally too. So you just mix that up into a big stew. And like Bill Self has had to masterfully kind of prod this from a lot of different directions.

29:07Billy Gil:And we've gone through the evolution of him being extremely defensive to like, you know, coming at it and trying to motivate him in indirect ways, I think. It just kind of strikes me like the missing variable is like we've kind of traced what it is. And I kind of feel like there's some kind of motivation. That's like, that's where I'm leaning at. And I think that's why I thought it was interesting that you said that first tape, because it's like medically, can we figure out what's going on with him? No, but we can't kind of deduct what his motivation might be. And I kind of think that might be what it is.

29:36Bill Simmons:Yeah. And that's why I said on the podcast on the night, like, that's the thing that scares me is if it's a, some sort of competitiveness question, that's where my red flags go up. If he's got hamstring cramps or they're trying, you know, maybe, maybe he's this generation's version of Kevin Johnson on the Phoenix Suns who just could never pull his hamstring every year. They could never figure it out. But if it's a competitiveness piece, I don't know. We're going to take a break and I want to go through some of the drafts where we've had the hardest trouble figuring out stuff. And I think the history of the draft is instructive of that.

30:12Bill Simmons:And then we got to talk about AJ and Boozer a little more too. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel's putting you in control right from tip-off. Choose your reward. You can be bold, play it safe, take some chances. Whatever you want to do, whatever your style, you're in control. You can bet on the NBA draft right now. If you think DeBansa is going to be the number one pick right now, he's a slight underdog to be number one pick, grab him. You could also jump into the last couple of months of the NBA season, grab money lines of teams you like and parlay them with whatever team is playing the seven teams that aren't trying anymore.

30:49Bill Simmons:It's a little fun, little tanking parlay you can have fun with. No matter how you play, Fandle is giving you the power to choose your word. Own your game this NBA season. Go to Fandle.com slash BS to make your pick, get in the game. Play it your way. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandle.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Audi, the official car of my son. Yeah. We all know the feeling, a change of plans, a new opportunity. Instead of overthinking, what if he just said yes?

31:28Bill Simmons:With the all-new Audi Q3, the answer is easy. It's made for the yes life with the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure, yes to right now, because saying yes without hesitation, that's the real luxury. The all-new Audi Q3 made for the yes life. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. So I went through the last, basically everything in the 21st century, trying to figure out the toughest number one pick calls. And I'm not talking about like the Reese O'Shea, Anthony Bennett, like we don't, we kind of don't know who the number one pick is. I'm talking about when there was ceiling and basement stuff and trying to navigate shit.

32:09Bill Simmons:The worst case scenario is pretty bad. The best case scenario of getting this guy is this. And we have to talk about this. So I think Wiseman, even though he didn't go first in 2020, was a good one for this. We just had no, what did he play, three college games? He was dominant the year before. There was no March Madness. They couldn't interview him. And it was COVID season. But there was a scenario where this guy was the next dominant center. At least maybe what Duren is for Detroit right now. A better version of that. like a better passing version of Duren. And it was like, shit, I can't pass that up.

32:48Bill Simmons:Fultz in 2017 was a good one because his team wasn't winning ever. And we just kind of penciled him into number one in December. And that's where we all decided. And then there was some Tatum buzz building and some Lonzo buzz building and Fultz's team never won. So that's two.

33:04Billy Gil:Wasn't there intel about Fultz that was similar, like keeps to himself, he's a little uncomfortable. Like just bringing that out. Yeah.

33:12Bill Simmons:Yeah, and there was one team that he interviewed with where he asked about if they had Chick-fil-A in the city. And they said that we don't have Chick-fil-A. And he was like visibly bummed out. And they were like, that's a real flag. That's a true story. Ben Simmons, 2016. Now, he played 33 games for OSU that year, but kind of punted.

33:39Tate Frazier:Just hated his life the entire time. Seemed miserable. Did a documentary about it, yeah.

33:42Bill Simmons:Yeah, the team wasn't good. He was doing that documentary. And there were like red flags, as good of an athlete as he was. There was some stuff that was like, what's going on with this guy? Embiid in 2015, this was all health related because he would have been the number one pick that year. He gets hurt. And then it becomes a question of, well, can we still take him first when he has his foot injury? And he goes third. Kyrie is my biggest miss of the 21st century with the draft. 2010. played 10 games for Duke. And I think I thought maybe it was Derek Williams. I forget who I had. I was like, you can't take Kyrie.

34:20Bill Simmons:We don't even know what he is. And this is where I think is the most instructive for Peterson. I want to circle back on that. Odin in 2007, where franchise center, but kept getting hurt, had some knee stuff already. And then 04 with Dwight Howard versus Okafor were one guys in college winning the title. The other guys just playing in high school in the South. How do we even know? the Kyrie thing is the interesting one because the Kyrie people were adamant. This guy was the best guy in the draft, throw away the Duke season, whatever. And the high school tapes kind of went out and Kyrie was as good as advertised.

34:54Bill Simmons:And I wanted to take, does that just happen with Peterson here? Where we we've had these college years that have thrown us off the scent with guys. Rondo is probably the most famous one where Rondo, where he was versus where he landed, outside the lottery and then became, but there's, there's been guys that have just done damage to themselves in one college year. Is that what's happening here?

35:16Tate Frazier:I do feel like Kyrie is a good one because Kyrie had this unique elite skill, which was finishing around the rim. And I think everybody was so confused and confounded by the fact that he was able to finish at such a high level with a both hands at the size that he was at. So everyone's like, there's no way this translates. And then you start kind of digging deeper and you're like, well, Rod Strickland's his godfather you know he's got a kind of all this basketball acumen behind him and then everyone's you know sort of talks themselves into it and you know you got all these different basketball people that are like you know it's a different guy different story and that's sort of what peterson has behind him it's like every time you want to poke a little bit of a hole in it there's people that come to you know kind of his bat quickly to be like no this is a different type of talent that we have here and i think wiggins was a little bit weird too right there was a lot of stuff with Wiggins where it was just like are we sure this guy can be a franchise guy he's a little bit off you know I'm not really sure what we do with him so maybe you know that could be another example right where he's just a supreme talent but not quite the the face of the franchise Mr.

36:17Tate Frazier:Personality that you would suspect AJ is that guy and that's why like if you're doing like kind of the sales pitch like AJ is going to do a lot better pitching himself as sort of like I'll be the spokesman I'll do this. I'll do that. Darren doesn't have that mentality. But as far as natural knack and natural ability, I feel like Kyrie, John, like that era of guards, you know, from like 2008 to 2011, Darren Peterson is kind of of that ilk of guys. And he's very special in that sense.

36:44Bill Simmons:Yeah, Kyle, it feels like Peterson, like when you read about the old drafts and it's like, wow, all those teams passed on Kobe. And then as the years passed, people were like, I wanted to take them. and Calipari talked us out of it. And, you know, team by team, everybody, there's half the people now are like, no, no, I wanted to take him. The reality is he fell to 13. And now it seems crazy, right? And we've had this a bunch of times with guys where guy falls out of the top five, into the top 10, 13 range. Donovan Mitchell was a really good one. It was like, why is he's really not going to go into the top 10?

37:21Bill Simmons:Like, this guy's clearly good. What's happening here? and then everybody feels stupid. I think the problem with the Peterson thing is this has a chance to make people feel all-time stupid. If you get thrown off the scent by this weird college season he's having, but this guy basically becomes Kobe crossed with Derrick Rose as a pro, and you're like, yeah, I didn't take him. And then it's like, guess where you're going to end up? On NBA TV or doing the podcast with us. And that's the issue, right?

37:51Billy Gil:I could say something blasphemous probably here. I think he's a more talented shooter than Kobe was at the same age. I don't really...

37:59Bill Simmons:I think that's probably true.

38:01Billy Gil:Yeah, and I think that's what makes it... I don't doubt his skill level at all in the same way. The thing that maybe potentially that we could look down the road is maybe this is a sign of complications with him in terms of how he interacts with teams or contract-type things or destinations. Like he's trying to move on, you know, from the XYZ destination quickly. Like I could see us like wringing our hands about those types of things. Like at the deadline is it's like, Oh, he's annoyed again. Like maybe this is a sign of those types of things. But you mentioned like over the years, it's like, there's a lot of different categories for those.

38:38Billy Gil:I don't, I don't know that they all fit in one box. It's like, there's structural things that we didn't see. Like the, there's the micro fracture thing that just a lot of guys fell prey to. Like Odin was one. I think Odin, I've said this over and over again, would have been good. I don't think he was a boss. I just think his, his body just couldn't do it. He was kind of in the Sam Bowie kind of category. And then there's the trends that like in the early 2000s with the Dirk thing where people were chasing that and overlooking obvious talent like Paul Pierce and things like that. And then there was just the fog of lack of information.

39:06Billy Gil:Like a Kobe Bryant would not happen today because we have access to all the high school footage. There's no VHSs. There's no I have them. You don't. It's everybody has access to all the information. So this one just feels a little bit more of a, it's hazy in the sense of we're just trying to look into the, the wheel hunting. Like no one can know the depths of Darren Peterson. Like, how can we know there's a lot of things that I think teams are going to be interviewing and trying to find out about him personally and making a call on that are hard for us to speculate, played about.

39:36Bill Simmons:I think Edwards was a good example of the learning from history where it's like, you know what? This guy's really good. Let's just take them. You know, This guy, he's got the competitiveness. He's got the athleticism.

39:50Tate Frazier:His teammates also loved him. I was at the Maui Invitational and Georgia was terrible, but his teammates were like, we love Ann. Everybody loves Ann.

39:59Billy Gil:I told Tate this, I think. I talked to Tom Crean, his college coach, last spring and I was like, what was the story with that? What was it with Ann? And he was like, Ann had never watched basketball. He said he liked football because he had just watched football more. He's like, he literally just had never watched film and we would talk about it. And eventually, you can see it clear as day in the NBA. He started watching the NBA and he's so phenomenally talented that he figured it out because that was a weird one to figure it out because it was just like, what's going on with this dude? Does he care?

40:25Bill Simmons:Yeah, and plus, they weren't able to work out people in person. In the 80s or 90s, Wiseman goes before Edwards. Like, they just screw that up. I promise you. Whatever draft it was, they would have screwed it up. Well, I promised you a hot take.

40:40Bill Simmons:I think AJ has to be the first pick. That's where I've landed I wasn't there in November or December, and I wasn't even totally there in January. I think it would be insane not to take him first. This is a sure thing. And the upside that you could potentially have with Peterson, this chance that he might, you basically might be this best guard of the last 20 years type of potential versus what we know we're going to get with AJ. I can't believe some of the stuff he's doing. that like some of the offensive stuff he's doing is like high level stuff Jason Tatum couldn't do until like year five. Like he, one of the things I like that he does, he does that, they'll like space out for him, which they don't really do in college where he's basically doing like a foul line post up on somebody, he'll back somebody down.

41:34Bill Simmons:And the cool thing is he doesn't just have one move off this post up. He can do the turnaround to the left. He can do a turnaround follow it to the other side or he can do a spin, go to the basket and he can spin to the basket on either side. So he basically has four options from this one spot on the court. He's 19 years old. Like nobody should be able to do this. Not to mention he's the best athlete in every game he's in. He rebounds. He plays defense. He wants to be out there competing. I sound like I'm getting paid off by the BYU Utah crew. I'm not. I just think like, I don't know how you pass on him.

42:11Bill Simmons:I can't believe he's an underdog to go number one. I think this is crazy. He has to be the number one pick. That's my take. Tate, your thoughts?

42:19Tate Frazier:I think if Brad Stevens had the number one pick, he would take AJ. And I observed that at the McDonald's game and how much he was watching AJ intently, not just on the basketball court, but how he was kind of maneuvering around the room, how he was talking to people. Obviously, he's a Brockton, Massachusetts kid, so there's a little bit of a connective tissue there to the Boston Celtics. But even then, I think the Celtics were like, you know, hey, if we end up in this lottery situation, like what is AJ? Does he fit in our world? It just felt strange to me. And I was observing Brad in that room and how he was watching AJ.

42:51Tate Frazier:And that stood out to me. Obviously, like you said, Utah's in the bag for this kid. They want him desperately. And if they have the number one pick, there's no doubt in my mind that they would take AJ number one. I don't think that Peterson would be, you know, upset if that were to happen, if it was a Utah situation, right? He'd just be like, okay, that's their guy. I go where I go. I'm okay with that. But when you watch AJ leads college basketball in scoring, I feel like he's not talked about enough. Richie Saunders goes down with the torn ACL. He's going to get even more of a shot diet. He's going to get even more usage, so he's going to take it up even more to a different level.

43:24Tate Frazier:So it's like if you haven't watched, go check him out now. And honestly, one of my favorite matchups this season, outside of the Peterson matchup, was when they had an exhibition game. It was BYU-North Carolina, Caleb Wilson versus AJ DeVanza. And these are two guys that are very competitive, that took it very personally. And they went at each other pretty hard for an exhibition game. And that fired me up. You know what I mean? Like this game doesn't really matter, but they played that like a tournament game. So as far as the makeup, you need someone that wants to be the number one pick. That was the whole thing with Paolo, right?

43:57Tate Frazier:Like you meet Chet, you meet Jabari, you meet Paolo. There's one guy in that group that believes internally he should be the number one pick. That was Paolo. Chet might say it, but I don't think he believed it. and Jabari definitely didn't want a piece of it, right? So like take the guy that wants to be number one. AJ wants to be number one. That's a part of his whole makeup and the way he's pitched himself to everybody. So I think that plays a big role too. And you want an elite wing. He's an elite wing. He's right there in front of us.

44:22Bill Simmons:And he's a 3-4. I think he gives you all this flexibility. I like that he can actually run offense already. We'll see if he can do that on the NBA level. But I think even since I saw him beginning of the season versus now, I see like a difference already. And that's even what happened with Cooper Flag on Dallas this year, where if you watched him in the first week of the season versus now, he's like a completely different guy. And then if you look at the Tankapalooza teams, where you have the Kings, Indianapolis, the Nets, Washington, Utah, the Hawks, Dallas, Memphis, he fits in with all the teams and is like a truly terrifying Indiana Pacer.

45:03Tate Frazier:Oh man, they all want to go

45:05Bill Simmons:That's the nightmare scenario for the East is AJ goes to the Indiana Pacers and you just put him with Halbert and Siakam and all those dudes. Kyle, have you noticed, especially like the last, I don't know, two, two and a half weeks, AJ just going up a level? Because it seems like now, like he's playing tonight, unfortunately, but as we're taping this for the game, he just seems like he's a 30 and eight now every game. That's what we're heading.

45:31Billy Gil:I mean, yeah, huge usage. I mean, I think he's pushing like 33 % usage. Like that number might even be higher since Richie went out. Richie might be an NBA player too. I thought it was 37 when I just looked. Yeah, I mean, it's insane. 37. It's insane. But I mean, yeah, I mean, the questions that I've had about him are, you know, he's obviously a really talented isolation score. You mentioned him. You could make a highlight reel that's like five minutes long of him just dribbling with his left hand to like 14 feet, hitting the guy and just shooting that little shot. So I've wanted to see him over the course of the season, like as teams like load on him doing that for him to like make those little passes to Kaba Kata, who's their big guy, is really athletic.

46:10Billy Gil:Just those are the areas where he can kind of expand. But I think the arc of this has been interesting for me is when I initially watched him, I was like, oh, this guy's like an incendiary athlete. It's like, I don't know that that is the intrinsic thing that's interesting about him as an athlete. I think his balance and he has like really interesting kind of herky-jerky pace in the paint that at times will sort of like rouse thoughts of like, there's a little bit of Shea in there. Like he's got some weird, odd footwork when he gets around the basket. I personally think that that is the thing that he's going to be able to lean into and make himself like a maddeningly tough to deal with scorer.

46:46Billy Gil:He wants to dunk on everybody. I love that. Like at all times. You mentioned the teams. I think this is the most interesting thing. So let's say the Hawks end up with that pick and AJ's on the board. If they still, you know, not that you make any decision based on like Kuminga, but they're going to have such an interesting cluster. Cluster of 6 '8", 6 '9", guys. This is ball boy. I've gotten the impression that from talking to people close to Darren, that Darren is more likely to say like, I'm interested in being like the full-on brain of this team. Like, I don't really want to play with another superstar.

47:21Billy Gil:I want to be like the center of the universe. Whereas AJ, people that know them both have told me that like, Like, AJ is probably more likely to fit in within Indiana, which is interesting because AJ kind of, he likes to have the ball. And, like, is he willing to be, like, quick off of the ball to play with a Halliburton? I just think that's an interesting wrinkle in this.

47:39Bill Simmons:Well, one of the ironies here is if he goes to Utah and he's with Markkinen and Triple J next year, that's kind of, like, the perfect front line. I love that fit for him. I like the fit for him anywhere. I just, Tate, he can face up and go to the basket left or right. I'm amazed that he can go left as easy as he does already. He's got a floater already. I mentioned the post-up stuff where he can swing either way in the turnaround or go to the basket. And I don't mind his three-pointer either. I think we'll see when you move it back to two and a half feet if it's the same, but he seems pretty comfortable doing it.

48:19Bill Simmons:He's competitive as hell. The defense is there. He rebounds in traffic. I don't know what he's missing. I don't really and I don't really understand how this is a debate when you have the other guy that we don't even know what's going on with him. And I get it. You could get seduced by the high school things. But if my job's on the line, I'm just I'm not risking it when this guy's a sure thing. And I think he's a sure thing.

48:41Tate Frazier:Yeah, the only two knocks that I would have on AJ are very fixable at the next level, which is his handle, which can be a little loose at times. But we're also not asking him to, you know, specifically initiate offense all the time. He can rip and run. And also, you gotta be fair.

48:56Billy Gil:Yeah, true.

48:58Tate Frazier:Yeah, comparing him to other 16 guys, he's got an elite handle. But again, you know, for what he's trying to do with his shot creation, that's one knock. And then help side defense, which I just feel like is a team kind of issue that like team defense is going to solve that at the next level where it's like, hey, you know, you can't be this lapsed on certain possessions and certain moments. And he does have a little bit of that. But again, he's 19 years old. You can write both of those off. So I feel like the only two knocks are two things that are going to be fixed at the next level and adjusted at the next level.

49:27Tate Frazier:And as far as like someone who really wants to like be better and be in the conversation and be a part of kind of like a bigger growth, you know, potential, I just feel like he is that guy. He's going to be in the dunk contest. You know what I mean? Like when you're just an NBA and you're a business, like this is a guy that's going to sign up and agree to do all this stuff and want to be a part of the show. And like that, like this is show business at some level. The business is good. The show is good. And like you said, that's why it's a shirt thing.

49:55Bill Simmons:Well, that's the funny thing is the way it was setting up for him, even when he went to Utah to play basketball in high school, and it just seemed like he was making decisions for money only. The way it's played out with Peterson this year is kind of what I thought was going to happen with AJ, where it was like, oh, we knew all these red flags. It's almost like they switch bodies. I just think, listen, Peterson can flip this, but right now on February 24th, I just think it's insane that AJ wouldn't be like the hands down number one pick with what we've seen. And especially that he's getting better.

50:27Bill Simmons:Boozer. We didn't even mention Boozer. Well, Boozer three. I was tester. I really like Caleb Wilson. I'm not just sucking up to Tate. I just, I know he's going to be a good NBA player. He can't really shoot, but he does so many other good things. We just know it. We know he's going to go in the pros. He's got a great touch and feel.

50:45Tate Frazier:It's going to translate. He's so good around the basket.

50:46Bill Simmons:And then if he adds a shot and he adds a little 15 footer, it's a bonus. But the competitiveness is there. Like, I just really like him. Boozer, though, I don't know how he falls lower than third. Because it's like, oh, which guy could fall out of the top three? I think this will be the one, two, three in some order. The Boozer piece, it's been funny now. Are people just dinging him, Kyle, because it's a Duke thing? And this is what we do with Duke guys, where it's like, there's a lot of yeah buts with Cam Boozer. And I don't really understand it because from what I see, like the dude, every game gets his stats.

51:24Bill Simmons:He's always around the rim. He hustles. He really gives a shit. He's a good passer. I wish he was two inches tall or he's not. Maybe there's an athleticism piece that's 90 % there, not 100. But just there's no way he's not going to be a good pro.

51:40Billy Gil:I think people are misidentifying his player type in a way. When they see him, they're like, okay, bully college 4-5. He's Jared Selinger, Tyler Hansborough's a good one. Yeah, he gets the Hansborough tag. But it's not the case with him. He's extremely multifaceted. I mean, his shot has really, really improved. I mean, he's not going to be making movement threes, but his set three is really good. I thought that Michigan game, Tate, I'm sure you watched that one, was a really interesting game of him going up against It's like an NBA-sized front court, and he just big-boyed him, and he also was playing out front.

52:17Billy Gil:He, to me, maybe doesn't have the wow factor of the... It's a little bit of a quieter winning production, multifacetedness kind of a thing that he has going on, where I personally think, and I've said this from the beginning when I was really trying to think of a comp for him, I think that he's a cross between a Kevin Love type and an Al Horford, whereas he may not hit the highest highs of the shot-making brilliance and the things like AJ, you know, and Darren might. But I think he's a guy that's going to win and just win for like over a decade. And I think if you look at the types of teams that are in the lottery, you plug him into Washington, Washington's instantly going to become like a play-in level team maybe or more.

52:56Billy Gil:I think Charlotte was my dream for him, but that's not going to happen. They're too good. New Orleans, Brooklyn, Indiana is the one. You put him next to Zubats next year. He's going to be, he will be ready to roll next year. And I've been telling my Pacer fan friends this, like he's going to be ready to roll immediately. So he's, he could help every team.

53:15Bill Simmons:Yeah. I think he's an instant, like 16 and eight guy in the pros. And a lot of it will depend on who is he, who's the five that he's playing. Like Washington's really fun. Cause he'd get to play with SAR and there's a little inside outside action with them with SAR as like the three point shooter, but rim protector. And then booze are doing all the other stuff. Tate, I know this is just killing you that we're talking about a Duke guy for this long, but can you make the glass half empty case for him or no?

53:41Tate Frazier:I mean, look, it would be the safe, not sexy pick. But at the same time, I got to interact with Cam, and I just came away thoroughly impressed. I mean, he and Caleb did their interview together with me. And these are two guys that played on the EYBL circuit together. He was always the one. Caleb was always the two. They were ribbing each other, talking about Duke, North Carolina. Caleb's like, I can't wait to get at you next year. Cam's just kind of sitting there like, yeah, sure. I'm looking forward to it. You know, very, you know, just very chill kid. And he's like, I'm like, what do you like to do in your free time?

54:13Tate Frazier:He's like, I like to hang out with my girlfriend and play golf. I'm like, oh, you're, you know, speaking, speaking my language, man. I like you. And as far as like the fundamentals of what he does plays off two feet, we, you mentioned Knipple earlier, like look how Con Knipple has been able to impact the team, impact winning and be so fundamentally sound that he's able to make an impact on a team. I think, you know, Cam has a little bit of that. Yeah. I like the Kevin Love reference. I was saying like a Paul Millsap, maybe. And again, these are just like, they're not exact. Don't insult him with that.

54:42Tate Frazier:Come on, Tate.

54:43Bill Simmons:Rebounds better, yeah. But I see what you're saying.

54:46Tate Frazier:Yeah, I mean, just like it has some of that, you know, touch shooting the basketball. He's obviously like a modern level big because he's able to stretch out to the three-point line, which is nice. And as far as winning, the guys won at every single level. So it's like, that's why it's a sure thing to me. And I'm even at the point, Bill, I'm not even a hater on the kid. I'm like, when you have the volatility of a Peterson and you have the AJ, does he fit with my team situation? If like a team like the Spurs or some good team gets thrown up into the front that already has a franchise guy, in their opinion, why not take a cam boozer?

55:19Tate Frazier:Who's only going to be additive and can also still get to a higher ceiling. Like I feel like there's going to be a situation where maybe teams are going to say, why not cam boozer? And he might even bump up a little bit higher than we suspect. So that's where I am with him. Cause when you watch him, he just dominates and the Michigan game kind of broke it for me to see him do that against Mara and more as Johnson to one athletic guy, one supersized giant. And he was able to still handle and manage and get his numbers. So great passer as well. We haven't talked about a really good passer.

55:49Bill Simmons:Really good passer. I wonder if Knipple is going to open up this wave of where teams just start to value more. Like that guy's really smart and knows exactly where to go and where to be and what to do on every play, even if he's not involved. Because that was what we liked about, and we really liked Knipple going into that draft last year. I love Knipple.

56:08Tate Frazier:I got a Knipple jersey. That's how, I'm all messed up, you know what I mean? This is news to me. For what school? Well, for the Hornets jersey. Oh, my God. I've never in my life. I try to forget that he played at Duke. That's, you know what I mean? That's what I'm trying to do. Kyle, you remember?

56:24Bill Simmons:Wisconsin Lutheran? I started texting Kyle about Knipple in like January, February during that Duke season. Like, what's going on with this guy? Who is this? And he seemed like it was a little Westbrook-ish where he was always in like the 8 to 16 range in the draft. And then all of a sudden, by the time we got to the draft, everybody kind of agreed like, oh yeah, that guy's going to be really good. And then he ends up going fourth. I think the same thing with Boozer. The more you watch him, he just knows where to go and what to do. The guy I was thinking about was David West for him. Earlier David West, not Warriors David West.

56:58Bill Simmons:but like David West, but a little bigger, but he's just, he's one of those guys that there's a fast break and the guy misses the layup. It's like, Oh, he missed. And then Boozer's just laying it in. Like he's always no, he's always in the right spot, which I think like when you think about the smarter teams that are going to be in this draft, like Indiana, that's the kind of guy that we keep mentioning Indiana, but it's important because that team made the finals last year. They added Zubats. They're going to get Halbert back and they might get a guy who is just immediately a transformative starter, you know?

57:32Bill Simmons:And I was thinking about even watching Tatum and Brown the first two years they were on the, the first year they were on the Celtics, the rookie years. And Jalen's rookie year, it was like, yeah, there's something there. Like he's a good athlete. Like I could see it. And it wasn't really until year two that he even really started to look like Jalen Brown. And Tatum the first year where you could tell he was good. we basically had him in the corner like he was Sam Hauser. Like they didn't run plays for him. He didn't really know how to initiate offense. He was a good defender rebounder. These three guys are so far ahead of where we were.

58:07Bill Simmons:So why, Kyle, why is that? Why are the guys, why do they seem further ahead? Did we improve AAU or what's going on? Because this was last year with Cooper too. Like Cooper comes into the league and he's running an offense at age 18. Like I don't really fully understand this.

58:23Billy Gil:Oh, I have some like broader kind of theories as to why that is. I think my biggest theory is just that I think, you know, let me, yeah. All right. Picking the direction I want to go with this. I mean, I think I've said this on the show before. I think basketball video, like access to it. I alluded to it before with the high school thing. I just think kids have access to quality information earlier and earlier. And I think that they are learning, you know, I think that they're learning skills that guys had to kind of source in different ways. you either had the benefit of knowing someone or having a good coach or just...

58:55Billy Gil:Those things have become more available to everyone. And I think that we're just seeing talent kind of double. We're seeing talent... So it's like a preparation thing?

59:05Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think so. Like advanced metrics across the video and studying what your weaknesses are and just getting better immediately?

59:11Billy Gil:Information about what's a good shot, information about moves. I think guys emulate efficiently. I just think those things are cleaned up. I don't know if Tate has an opinion on this. This is one of my big theories about basketball in general, is that I think that's why kids are better younger, is that they can study great examples earlier. And overall, I think it's just brought the intelligence of the sport up, in my opinion.

59:35Bill Simmons:Well, it's like when I had Khan on before I gave him a ride back to his hotel, and we did the pod.

59:39Billy Gil:That was great. I wanted to bring that up, but I didn't feel like I was in on the bed. I love to hear that.

59:44Bill Simmons:But Khan was saying how he loves the advanced metric stuff, and he was like, I was looking, and I realized, like I suck from one of the corners. And I was like, I do. And then he basically like, all right, I got to work on that corner where you think like 25 years ago, you know, Michael, although candy wasn't like, oh, maybe I shouldn't shoot that lefty jump hook. What are your theories on this tape?

1:00:06Tate Frazier:I do think like I'm with Kyle. I think they do get the information, right? We have the Kim Palm, the Torvik. I mean, everybody's kind of going and watching their own tape and have people, you know, helping them break it down at this point. But I do think this crop of, especially U.S. players, have all been around each other in the USA basketball system. And it's kind of like skateboarding early on, right? You started seeing guys do tricks and you're like, I'm going to try that. You know what I mean? Or like, I'm picking up a little bit of that. And I do feel like that's what's happened with this group where like, you know, flag demands to see something that flag is doing to get to his spots.

1:00:37Tate Frazier:And then he's initiating it and putting it in his game. And like, they've all kind of made each other better. And that's when I was at the McDonald's game, seeing all them. I was, it was funny to see like Braden Burries, who's at Arizona, who's great. He was like watching Darren Peterson do his individual workout. And it's like they're all kind of in the same crop with each other. And not that that's anything different, but I just think in general there's a lot of talent in this two, three-year window. And they've all made each other better, and they all are very competitive against each other.

1:01:05Tate Frazier:So I think Kyle's right as far as being smarter about it. But I also think as one person does something, like what Cooper has been able to do, they all are trying to climb that same mountain. And I think that's really – it's great for USA basketball. Well, we need a new group to come in and be great. And I do think that we have that right now.

1:01:20Bill Simmons:Well, that leads me to the second take I was going to unleash on you guys. This is a test driver. Think about this next time we can talk about it. I've talked about age limits for Team USA for the hoops. 26 and under. That's just our team in 28. Can't be 27 or over. And we just built it around Ant and Flag and basically these draft classes. And we just have this young fighting machine of dudes that just let's go. Let's roll. And, you know, I'm glad Kevin Durant wants to play for Team USA for the fifth time, but let's move on. Let's get some of the younger guys in. Let's get some young blood in.

1:01:58Bill Simmons:I think the experience is so great for them. I would love to see a team built around all of the guys that we've had basically in the 2020 drafts. And just let's do it.

1:02:08Tate Frazier:Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, backcourt. Like that is a, that's a, that's a team that I want to see.

1:02:13Bill Simmons:Flag, Chet, the top three from this draft. Let's bring Caleb Wilson off the bench as a 12th man. I just think that would work. Hey, before we move on from this draft, there's a bunch of really fun guys from five to 10. And I have a favorite, which is the third thing I haven't told you guys. but who's your favorite in that five to 10 range, Kyle? Is it still the Louisville kid? Because I know you love the Louisville kid.

1:02:37Billy Gil:I like him. I have some just kind of like novel favorites that I argue for a lot. I mean, Kingston Fleming deserves a mention from Houston. We have an interesting kind of case in this class where we had a couple guys who were off the main circuits and were playing on like those extra circuits who weren't as visible and they kind of got undervalued and they just shot up the board. Kingston Fleming is one of those. Keaton Wagler at Illinois is another one. There's a sneaky one for Kentucky. I'm not going to, I mean, Mike, well, we could start with Michael Brown. I think it's pretty likely. Tate, I don't know how you feel about him, but movement shooter.

1:03:12Billy Gil:He's a little skinny, but he can really pass the ball. He strikes me as somebody that he's kind of, he would fit really well alongside another star. He's got interesting size, about 6 '3", 6 '4". But yeah, those are guys kind of in the projected in the top 10 that I think are interesting.

1:03:27Bill Simmons:Tate, who's your favorite?

1:03:29Tate Frazier:I mean, I saw Wagler in person on Saturday. I went to that Illinois-UCLA game. And Wagler is one of those guys where he does take some head-scratching shots at times where you're just like, I'm a little worried that he can't, you know, get a better look than that. But a lot of times he makes those step-back threes. So you're like, I'm intrigued. He's got great passing, you know, vision. And that's why Brad Underwood, who had never seen him play in person, gave him the offer. I've seen him kind of drum up boards right now. There's another guy that I think you'd really like, Bill. And he's not in the five to 10, but he's probably in the late lottery.

1:04:00Tate Frazier:Braylon Mullins at UConn. If you're just one of those teams, like a magic. Yeah. That just wants like a shooter, like a specialist type. But I do feel like Braylon has more to his game than he's really shown. At this point, he's getting better and better, getting more usage from Dan Hurley, getting more trust from coach Hurley. Got to meet his family, was a big fan of them. And they're just like an Indiana. Like you talk about can nipple a little bit. Like, I feel like a Mullins could be one of those guys where it's like, we just got a smart, really good sound basketball player that can make a lot of shots for us.

1:04:30Tate Frazier:He's another one I would throw into that group that I really like, late lottery.

1:04:34Bill Simmons:I'm still working on this. I've only concentrated in the top four, but now that football is gone, I can really start watching the college. There's one guy I really like, and I don't know if he's polarizing. I know nothing about what the take is. He's in the top 10. I really like the Arkansas kid. oh yeah a cuff yeah i think that kid's got something um he's got f you mentality that's something about him that i'm just i'm kind of in i want to see him a couple more times but he's a guy who could explode for 50 in any college game he's he's like a sequence guy where it's like he gets hot and you can kind of feel it um i like that he's easy three point shots but he's also paint shots, but he can also get to the rim.

1:05:21Bill Simmons:And he seems like, he's listed at 6 '3". He seems like maybe an inch taller than Kyrie. But I'm, like if I, I think March Madness is going to be fascinating this year. We have so much talent in the March Madness this year. But he's the one that I could see just bumping off. It's like the 1-8 matchup and he just single-handedly takes down somebody. So I'm watching him. I think he's been my favorite in the top 10 outside of the top four.

1:05:46Billy Gil:Yeah, he's got, He's more the steadiness thing that we were talking about before with Boozer, where it maybe isn't as like, it's not as flashy at times, but he's absolutely, I think he's one of the smartest guards that Cal's ever coached. I think he's right there. Tyler Uless is another one who just had the disadvantage of being really small, but he's really, really sharp. He's an orchestrator. You mentioned sequences, and I think that's really something that he's great at, is he sees things ahead of time. When teams switch coverages, I've seen him do this multiple times. he's like, he'll look at the floor and be like, it's not that there's a guy open immediately, but Acuff is really good at seeing the board and being like, okay, I know if you, if there's a screen here or you space here, we're going to get a shot after this move.

1:06:28Billy Gil:Like he thinks a couple moves ahead. He's really savvy, man. I can see him being like, as people reach for the flashy, shiny objects, 10 years from now, we're like, damn, Darius Acuff is just maybe not an all-star, but he was a winning player for, you know, a decade.

1:06:43Bill Simmons:Great, great name too. You could hear either Ian Eagle or his son being like, A-cuff for three! And I haven't done nearly enough work yet, but I also, as I told you guys before the pod, I like the Kansas Center. I don't care that he's undersized. Flory Badunga. That guy's going to be an NBA player in a rotation. From Kokomo, Indiana. I don't know if it's the older I get or whatever, but you can just clearly see who the NBA players are sometimes. It's like, that guy will be in a rotation. I don't care that he's two inches too short. it'd be like oh shit OKC took him at 38 like should I be shocked before we go San Antonio Detroit was last night did you see it Tate

1:07:23Billy Gil:yeah I'm locked in oh man oh boy

1:07:30Bill Simmons:we're inching closer and closer to the holy fucking shit San Antonio could actually win the title

1:07:38Billy Gil:2012 OKC territory like we're like this is for real like we gotta take it seriously

1:07:43Bill Simmons:Yeah, and it's probably even like 2011 OKC, where that was like the year before the year.

1:07:51Bill Simmons:Wemby wasn't even good and got the shit kicked out of him and must have fallen 20 times and didn't have good stats. And yet I thought he completely dominated the game. It was crazy. Like Cade, that was the worst game I've seen Cade play since they were having like the losing streaks. and what he is able to do to these guards over and over. He did it to SGA. He did it to Cade. These guys that are used to just, I'll either shoot three or I'll go to the basket. I'll get my little 12 foot floater or whatever. And when he just removes that and you can watch their brains break in real time where they're like, fuck, I don't have that shot anymore.

1:08:31Tate Frazier:They didn't think it was possible to clam up.

1:08:33Billy Gil:I thought that was possible, but it's not. So I don't know anything anymore.

1:08:39Bill Simmons:And then they have to move back three feet and it screws up the whole offense. And then, you know, Castle going forth is one of the draft tragedies of the last 20 years. We were talking about it during the drafts. We all were like, this is stupid. This teams are going to regret this. But the stuff that he's doing in these big games where he's really like brings attitude. And I just think he's a way better offensive player than I think anybody could have guessed this early. combined with their bench.

1:09:09Billy Gil:He out-Detroited Detroit last night. He totally did. Like Holland and Asar and Cade and those guys who like puffed their chest out and hit you first and things like that. You can tell he took that game personally. I mean, I'm reading into it a little bit, but he, I mean, going at Cade on offense, like he was, God, he was a dog last night.

1:09:26Bill Simmons:I don't want to overreact to it because they don't have Stewart. So that wasn't like, if that was a finals preview, that you can't because Stewart is so important to Detroit and he's another tough guy. and he would have even helped their game plan even more, Tate, of let's just beat the living shit out of Wemby for two hours. Yeah. Which I still don't think San Antonio is going to win the title, which isn't a hot take because they're like 10 to 1 to win the title. So it's not like I'm going out on a limb. But I do think the physicality of the playoffs is going to be my question with Wemby. Because you can see the strategy now.

1:09:57Bill Simmons:It's even in like off-ball stuff. There was that one play, it was in the first half, when they were waiting to throw the ball in and Dern's just like hitting Wemby. And they're fighting for this one piece of turf. And Dern's just leaning on him and elbowing him and pushing him. And that's just what teams are going to do. And I don't know if he's going to hold up this year. He might be two years away from that. What do you think?

1:10:18Tate Frazier:I don't know if the centers all have like a group where they all have like a conversation together, but I do feel like all the fives in the NBA are. Yeah, like a text. A center's group text is great. Somebody should do that. They're all trying to convince Wimby not to play the five. Like if you watch any of these games, like anytime that he's at the five and he's matched up against another five, like they are just trying to wreck him as much as they can to be like, you really want to play the four. Like you don't want to play the five with us. You're not strong. You don't want to be down here.

1:10:45Tate Frazier:They're trying to AD him. Exactly. They're trying to get him out of the paint and be like, you don't want any part of this. And I do feel like Wimby has been, he's been taking a beating, but he does bounce right back up, which I think is the really encouraging sign. And he seems like he's okay with dealing with it. I got in trouble because when the Hornets fight happened, I said Detroit kind of reminded me of like some fake tough guys. you know like oh boy whoa hey man i i like diabate diabate got you know roughed up by durin and he met him with the same amount of fire and then you know obviously like you said the enforcer beef stew came off the bench and made sure to to send his own message um but without beef stew there it did feel like a little bit of that a tinge of that i really like this detroit team i would say they're probably my favorite team right now in the nba i enjoy watching them play cade's one of my favorite players just watching him when he was younger to see what he's turned into.

1:11:35Tate Frazier:Yeah. But that was the first time I saw Cade, like you said, Bill, get really shook by the space he was not able to dominate because of his size. And it was because of Wimby. And, you know, I thought we were maybe overrating Wimby a little bit just because everybody was like, I mean, is he going to be the youngest MVP ever? Is he going to win a finals in his first year? And that's a lot to put on someone. But he's there. He's absolutely there. So, you know, I think at this point we can accept that fact.

1:12:03Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's why you can't totally do the MVP conversation and you just compare two guys' stats. There's other stuff that goes into it. This is what I was saying about Jalen Brown on Sunday. Jalen Brown's guarding the best guy on the other team a lot of the times this season. Wemmy's wrecking offenses in big games. That has the biggest X factor of any MVP conversation.

1:12:25Billy Gil:He had a play last night. I sent this to Rob where, because we were watching, we were both watching the second half. He didn't play great in the first half, but he definitely responded to that physicality in the second half. Him and Duren going at it was really interesting, but they were in this play that you see a lot of NBA teams run where Cade's at the top and he passes it to the left and it's an empty side, basically pick and roll. And Dennis Jenkins, who's been great, comes across it and he's got Duren in the dunker spot and the center is put in this position to play two people. Wimby literally just kept his hand next to Duren and was just like, this is not going to happen.

1:12:57Billy Gil:and you're not going to throw this lob. Did it all the way to the basket. And Danis was like, all right, well, I guess I have this layup. And I looked at the time marker, and the second didn't change is how quickly this happened. So Wimby is flat-footed. He rotates his body and blocks Danis at, like, the high point where no one ever blocks shots. And you see these guys repeatedly be like, that's a goaltin. And you go back and watch it and be like, no, it wasn't. Miraculously, it wasn't. Like, Wimby just, he can play. I was talking with somebody about this where Wimby's drop coverage and like soft show in ball screens is as effective as...

1:13:31Billy Gil:He doesn't have to switch all the time. Like he can give guys a pad and give them this false illusion like he did with Cade of like, oh, well, this is there. And then Cade sees it a couple of times. Usually the Pistons are the people making people think about things other than basketball. And the Spurs were just like... It was a really interesting title checkmark thing for them last night, I thought, where they were like, yeah, we're tough and we're good on offense and they have a lot of stuff.

1:13:54Bill Simmons:Yeah, especially because they blew the lead. Detroit came back, Detroit took the lead the crowd was incredible, I mean the Detroit games are some of the best crowds we're getting in any sport and San Antonio just figured it out, plus our guy Harper, Kyle I just I always get excited when he's a little bit involved and in some ways I almost wish he was on a bad team just so he could be what's going on with Flag where he just gets to test drive stuff all season and there are no stakes, but I think he's figured out how to fit in more and more as the years gone along I'm fascinated by them Wemby three times a game just does something you just you forget that he can do you know like these alley hoops where he doesn't jump I'm not used to them yet I'm not used to the experience of that yet yeah he's just like boom it's like watching somebody on a nerf hoop and I can't get used to it and then the way he's challenging shots in the paint.

1:14:53Bill Simmons:I'm just not used to it. So I can't imagine what it would be like to play him. I do think I said this Sunday that I just don't think Detroit as a four round team makes sense to me with how much is on Cade. And you saw it last night. There's like he didn't have it. They kind of figured him out. There was no second guy to help with the offense. They don't have that yet. Whereas like all these other teams, they always have like a plan B or a plan C on offense. I don't see the plan B with Detroit. It's really like Tobias Harris. And I just don't think that's good enough for four rounds, but that's my take.

1:15:27Bill Simmons:Anyway, that was some game. We got an OKC Detroit this week too, which I think is Wednesday night, but that'll be a good one as well. All right, guys.

1:15:35Tate Frazier:We need SGA to come back so we can have like a real MVP conversation. The 65 game thing is ridiculous. And if it keeps us away from having like a de facto default MVP, I'm not going to be happy, Bill. I just want to put that out there.

1:15:48Bill Simmons:It's good for Wemby the longer he sits out. That's true. And Cade. Yeah, and Cade.

1:15:55Billy Gil:Detroit Spurs play again March 5th. That's going to be a good one at San Antonio.

1:16:00Bill Simmons:All right, fellas. I'm going to have you on again in a couple weeks and we can do a little update. We'll see what happens with our guy, Peterson. But come in. Can you hear me on the Ringer NBA show? Tate Frazier, not only on Ringer Gambling Show as we head toward March Madness Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the hit show of 2025, bring her tailgate. Oh yeah. One of the most important video podcasts ever created. Unleash Joel Anderson on the planet as the comedy figure of his times. But you're keeping that going all the way through the draft, right?

1:16:32Tate Frazier:And once a week, we sometimes, you know, I send them the rundown and they have a, Joel has a different plan for what we're going to talk about. So, I mean, it's a beautiful thing. We never know what's going to come up. You know, Joel has so many, so many stories and Van is living his best life. So it's a lot of fun with those two guys.

1:16:47Bill Simmons:Well, we're going to take a break, come back with somebody else who's on that show. The Duke Billy Gill is next. So thanks guys. Good to see you. And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by State Farm and basketball. You can have the best player in the league. It doesn't mean he's going to win the title. He can't do it alone. He's going to have to lean on teammates, coaches, even fans to push them to be better. And we've seen some pretty iconic assists over the years. Yeah, in the second half of the 2010s, you had Steph and Clay. You had KD joining the Warriors at some point.

1:17:20Bill Simmons:Denver, they win the title. It wasn't just Jokic. Jamal Murray was huge that year too. OKC last year, SGA. Then J-Dub steps in every once in a while. You need some help. You might even see with San Antonio this year with Wembe, but also Steph Castle. Like basketball, life is easier with great assists. State Farm is here to dish one. your way. They're not just an insurance company. They're a teammate who's on your bench ready to listen and assist and help you get the right coverage when it matters most. State Farm. With the assist, coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state.

1:17:56Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn Ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys. You could target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B return and ad spend on all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them.

1:18:29Bill Simmons:Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash Simmons bill. terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Instagram. As a parent, I know that you're always going to worry about your teens. And while we can't keep them at home in a bubble, there are still ways to make sure they're protected. Like Instagram teen accounts. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for your teens see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools and extra controls for parents who prefer them. And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences.

1:19:08Bill Simmons:Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teenaccounts. That's instagram.com slash teenaccounts. All right, the Duke is in the house. Billy Gill, you can see him on the Ringer NFL show. You can see him on Ringer Tailgate with Tate, who is just on, and he loves baseball. I am gonna start doing a little more on baseball on this podcast. It's slowly come back. Hopefully, we're not gonna have a debilitating three-year labor strike later this decade. For now, we have baseball. And I gave you an assignment. What theme did we officially decide on?

1:19:43Bill Simmons:Where did you land?

1:19:45J. Kyle Mann:I was going to say it was a very loose assignment. It was like, let's come up with a list of five things, maybe seven, maybe eight, maybe nine, maybe things about spring training. So with that direction, I kind of tried to piece all of that together and see what I could come up with. So what I did was I kind of went over what happened last season. And then what I did was I think I created maybe a cheat sheet of eight or nine things that I feel like if you know, headed into spring training, you can kind of be caught up with what's going on in the world of baseball right now. Or you could fake it just enough to your friends will think like, oh, this person's really paying attention.

1:20:20Bill Simmons:So conversation starters slash I'm fooling people at cocktail parties, including the one guy here who really follows baseball. And I'm going to prove I can hang with them, even though I only have these nine things.

1:20:32J. Kyle Mann:Yeah, you just kind of need a couple nuggets, I feel like, that you throw in there. And we could do maybe a thing per team or whatever that you have. You just throw that out there. So what I did was, I don't know if you still do this, Bill. So I kind of like the actual magazines, the books, the research. So I went a little bit crazy when I got the Lindy Sports Baseball book. Oh, look at that. Yeah. I went through. I took some notes. I went through all 30 teams. So if you want, we can just kind of pick some teams at random if you don't like any of the topics. 178 pages of team previews we went through.

1:21:04J. Kyle Mann:Well, you're talking to a guy

1:21:06Bill Simmons:who still buys the USA Today Sports Weekly during spring training to follow the fantasy baseball.

1:21:11J. Kyle Mann:Yeah, they still make it. I love that. Do you baseball forecaster it at any point? No. Do I need to? I mean, it's like very in the weeds on like advanced metrics. Baseball forecaster is more so for fantasy, but the thing with fantasy is it's all speculative, right? Like you're just kind of guessing. So you can spend all these hours. This poor Ron Chandler writes this book every single year. I think this is like the 26th, 20th, whatever edition it is. And he's been doing this forever. And someone gets hurt and none of that matters. So he goes around, he talks to all these people. None of it really makes a ton of difference.

1:21:44J. Kyle Mann:But I'm on a revenge tour this year, Bill, in my fantasy league. Because I think this is the 20th or 21st season of our fantasy league. And I started out strong. I won two out of the first three championships. And I haven't won anything since. And yeah, we're getting to the point where I think that I can do it. My wife doesn't believe in me. She's asked me to quit. She successfully got me to quit the COVID year because she told me, yeah, COVID year I took off, which was a big mistake because she said, you're going to give them the buy in. You're going to lose. You're going to get upset. You're going to be mad at your cousin.

1:22:21J. Kyle Mann:My cousin's the commissioner, but he's a bit of a scoundrel and he changes the league rules every year. There's a bunch of lawyers in the league. So they'll send out like their own like new league rules, but it's all in legalese and it's like 40 pages long. And it's like, I get the gist of it. I'll figure it out. Every year there's new rules. Every year there's cheating of some kind. I'm the only person in the history of the league who has had trades vetoed. It's happened to me on two separate occasions. And are they like spiteful moves that I'm making? Yes. But do they fall within the spirit of other moves?

1:22:52J. Kyle Mann:Like, absolutely. Because my thinking is, in fantasy, if you're going to do something outrageous, right, where you make a trade where it's clearly very one sided, why not just go big? So like I would make trades or attempt to make trades where I'm trading essentially like my whole roster and I have three team deals, four team deals. Do I have to reach out to the other teammates because they've given up on the season? I have to get their passwords to like approve them. Like maybe potentially. I'm not going to admit any of that. But these these always get vetoed. So I'm very upset with my commissioner.

1:23:23J. Kyle Mann:Wait, is it a keeper league

1:23:24Bill Simmons:or is it just every year it's a new team league?

1:23:26J. Kyle Mann:That's another situation because it's fluctuated back and forth, different versions over the years. We're now finally settled on, we're doing categories. It's a keeper league. You can keep the players for two years. So you have draft them. You can keep them twice and it's four rounds higher than you drafted them for the previous year. So like if I draft someone in the 20th round and I want to keep them next year, it's the 16th round. the following year is the 12th. And then after that, they're in free agency. Yeah, exactly.

1:23:55Bill Simmons:So I'm in this, I'm in a 40 player AL keeper league with where we do a draft and you can keep a guy, it's two years. You can keep them two, three, four more years. It's$5 more every year. It's insane. I've been in it all century. I haven't won in over 20 years. I'm partners with my buddy Hench and I really care about it. And it's a colossal waste of time.

1:24:18J. Kyle Mann:Well, that's the thing. it becomes a full-time job like fantasy baseball is a it's like fantasy football is the most popular of the fantasies right anyone can play fantasy football you basically just set your team yeah and you don't really need skill you just kind of draft your team just make sure that you know when there's bye weeks just swapping people out whatever baseball is like a full-time commitment

1:24:38Bill Simmons:well throw in a minor league draft like we had a couple years ago we had the number one pick and it was between marcella meyer and anthony volpe the yankee shortstop i spent more time on this decision for three weeks than I did on like the ringer. It was really important. Hench and I just texting, we're texting like features we've read on each guy. It was pathetic. Not a shame.

1:24:59J. Kyle Mann:The thing is, it hurts me how much I end up caring and I see how me caring impacts my family negatively. So I want to say that if I win, I'll just be like, let me go out on top, but I know I'm going to come back and I'm going to have to kind of defend the crowd. I'm never, I'm never going to quit. I regret quitting the one season that I did because my wife was like, you're going to give them the money. They're just going to get mad. They're going to cheat. You're going to be screaming. You're going to spend, because I would spend, I remember we were in Washington, DC, like on a trip. I was like an internship up there, like PTI, whatever.

1:25:30J. Kyle Mann:And I spent multiple days just with this little notebook on an inflatable couch that I got from like the grocery store, like one of those, you know, like composition notebooks with like this whirly stuff on the cover. And I'm just like trying to figure out how can I trade this person? How can I trade that person. I execute what I think is a perfect trade. It gets vetoed and I'm just cursing out my family members. I have like other cousins that are in this league as well. My dad was in this. He got kicked out because of apathy. It's a very serious league. It's a very serious league.

1:25:57Bill Simmons:Most of our fights are that somebody made a trade without without shopping the same offer to other people. It's the same fight every year.

1:26:04J. Kyle Mann:There's no honor in my league that you never really make the people available to everyone. There's inside trading here. There was a situation where we had to kick people out of the league where one of the iterations of this league, it was like the first time we were going to do keepers. Right. Yeah. So we had a guy that was a friend of ours from high school. He was a lawyer and he had been like a lawyer intern, whatever it would be that they're called. Right. Where they're kind of just like starting up at the law firm. So he was in our league. He was related to us. Paralegal. I think so. Maybe.

1:26:38Bill Simmons:I'm helping.

1:26:39J. Kyle Mann:It doesn't matter. Yeah. So anyways, so he comes in. He's not paying attention at all. He trades all of his good players to his lawyer boss, who's a friend of ours. And then the explanation was like, no, well, it's a keeper league. So he got this back. So this person is going to be worth something like three seasons. So this is actually a good deal. Except he ended up leaving our league. They changed the format the following year. So none of those people were keepers. It was just cheating from the beginning. It's honestly, it's bullshit. Every year is bullshit. Something happens. Someone's trying to pull a fast one over someone else.

1:27:07J. Kyle Mann:We have a corrupt commissioner. No one wants to stand up to him. It's nonsense. But I can't give up because I need to win this league. I need to get back on top and feel alive. I feel like it'll bring me back to my youth. You know, like I'm old now. I have kids. I don't have the same energy. I wake up and I feel like I'm missing something. And I think that what I'm missing is a fantasy baseball championship. And that'll get me right back on top and bring me back to where I was 20 years ago.

1:27:33Bill Simmons:I was in a league where the guy traded Mookie Betts for three guys who sucked. Oh, no, that was real life. That was the red side. My bad. I got mixed up for a second. Anyway, let's go. What are your things? What's your number one thing? Give us your conversation starter, your cocktail party helper.

1:27:55J. Kyle Mann:All right. Well, so before we get to the cocktail party helpers and all the conversation starters, last year, great year for baseball.

1:28:02Bill Simmons:A plus.

1:28:02J. Kyle Mann:record numbers, World Series, incredible World Series, setting records, 30 million viewers. I think Game 7 had 50 million viewers. They're doing this thing now where they're combining viewers in Canada, the US, and Japan to say like, wow, 50 million viewers watched this combined across the three countries. And it's kind of like, we've never measured anything in television across three countries. But if that's what we have to do, like, okay, fine, Major League Baseball. Like, it was a great game. Game tying. home run, game winning home run, plays at the plate. It was awesome. I thought, and I don't know if you were the same.

1:28:38J. Kyle Mann:I thought at the time that the Blue Jays going wouldn't be best case that like for viewers, it would be like Yankees, Dodgers again, but Yankees, Dodgers like that'll be doing it. But I didn't take into account the three country factor that I didn't know that we did in rating viewers where Canada would be involved. And then of course, Japan is involved with Shohei. So it ended up being great for the game. Attendance has been up. Length of game has been going down, but there are changes coming to baseball. And that's kind of one of the things that we're going to get to.

1:29:11Bill Simmons:I thought it turned out to be a great world series. I was dreading Dodgers Yankees because that would have meant the Yankees could potentially win the world series. So just having them out of it was great. But I think the thing that changed last year was the Dodgers becoming like this monolith, you know, almost like what the Mahomes Chiefs were like or the Brady Pats. Like they kind of moved like the Kobe Shaq Lakers or the Warriors in the 2010s. They moved into this thing now where they're now this unbeatable champ, this thing we can all measure against to try to beat, which I'm pro. I like that when we have a team like that.

1:29:47Bill Simmons:You don't like it as much.

1:29:49J. Kyle Mann:It's not that I don't like it. I think last year played out well for the Dodgers because they didn't struggle, but they didn't run away with it in the regular season. They didn't win 100 games, so it wasn't like they're going out there. They're winning 115 games. It's not close. They almost lost the World Series. It took seven games. They could have lost it in six. They could have lost it in seven. So the Blue Jays kind of taking them to that point, like to the brink, extra innings, and then they win it. It was fine. Like, it was good. It was an exciting game. It was kind of like, okay, well, this feels like someone can kind of get to the Dodgers because surely the Dodgers can't just spend every offseason throwing all of their money.

1:30:26J. Kyle Mann:They already spent$700 million on one guy. Like, obviously, they're going to run out of money at some point. They can't just keep up this insane spending, right? Well, they did. They continued the insane spending in the offseason. They just continue to do whatever it is that they want. So we'll see how it goes. I mean, the West is... The Padres can kind of maybe... Padres can put up a fight here. The Padres are kind of like a perennial disappointment under Achiever, though, right? I feel like we're told every year, this is the year the Padres are going to do it. And now we've kind of just somewhat given up on teams overtaking the Dodgers in the West.

1:31:02Bill Simmons:Yeah, what's the NFL version of that? The looks awesome on paper. I mean, it's probably the Buffalo Bills, yeah.

1:31:10J. Kyle Mann:Yeah. I mean, the Bills, you feel like it's always going to be their year. The Bills, like, the thing is, there's no Dodgers in the NFL right now. It was the Chiefs.

1:31:19Bill Simmons:It was the Chiefs, yeah, but it didn't last.

1:31:22J. Kyle Mann:It's done, yeah. I mean, it lasted as long as it could, but everybody just kind of got old.

1:31:27Bill Simmons:Well, the Dodgers, so they get the Mets closer, Diaz, and they also get Kyle Tucker. Just add that, add that to a two-time champ. That kind of sucked for the National League. And it spun the Mets out was the other fun part of that.

1:31:42J. Kyle Mann:you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to fast forward to number nine since we're already talking about on my nine things that you should talk about. This is the last thing. Yeah, we're going backwards. Yeah, this is the last thing here. Well, just because we're already here, so we might as well get to it. So actually, this is number eight. So this is, what are they doing? Like what exactly is going on here? And the teams that we're trying to figure out what exactly is going on here are the Dodgers, as we mentioned, because the Dodgers continue to spend money. They continue to do whatever it is that they want to do.

1:32:12J. Kyle Mann:right? They give$240 million to Kyle Tucker. Why did they do that? Why did they give him$60 million a year? Aside from the fact that they can, what is the actual explanation for why the Dodgers are giving that money to him? He wasn't that great last season. He had like 20 home runs. He had like an 800 plus OPS. He's good. But$60 million seems like you should be a game changer, which he wasn't really. So what are they doing?

1:32:44Bill Simmons:So it seems like with these shorter contracts, I was talking to a Dodger fan friend of mine about this, where in the old days, it was, you'd give the Pujols contract, right? It was like, what was that? Like eight, 10 years, whatever it was for. And then -

1:32:57J. Kyle Mann:250, whatever.

1:32:58Bill Simmons:And the last half of that contract, you're kind of screwed. It's like, ah, fuck. We got four good years out of this. Now we got to ride out these next four. And the Dodgers are just like, we'll overpay you now. And we'll get out of it after. four years and maybe you're a$35 million or$40 million a year guy, we're going to pay out the extra$20 a year now. Hope you're good in your prime. And if you are, it's a bonus. If not, we're getting rid of that money during the contract. And then we don't have it hanging over our heads six years from now. Seems like the strategy. I'm not against it. It's just weird.

1:33:31J. Kyle Mann:Yeah. I mean, they also signed the best closer out there. So they're set, you know... They didn't have a closer last year. Yeah. Any hold that they had Tanner Scott, who ended up kind of being a disappointment for them. So wherever they had minor weaknesses, they no longer have any of those weaknesses. So the Dodgers just continue to spend money. The Giants decided, you know what we're going to do? We're going to hire the University of Tennessee's head baseball coach this year, because we don't really know what it is that we're going to do to keep up with the Dodgers. Buster Posey's there. He's in charge.

1:34:06J. Kyle Mann:He fires Bob Melvin after a 500 season. And he says, you know what we're going to do? Let's hire a college coach that's never coached at any position in Major League Baseball. What are the Giants doing here?

1:34:17Bill Simmons:That one I did not understand. Well, we've seen this happen in NFL and the results are mixed to say the least. But it reminded me a little of the Steve Spurrier. It's like, this guy's good. Maybe it'll translate. And keep your fingers crossed.

1:34:31J. Kyle Mann:Well, it's kind of like when Saban went to the NFL, right? Yeah, that's another one. Really pan out, I guess. Another one that's going on, because the NOS right now, it's just everyone's trying to keep up with the Dodgers. And the only reason the Dodgers are on here is because of how much money they gave Kyle Tucker for 22 home runs and 71 RBIs. Is the Rockies decided, you know, we had a terrible season last year. We need to change things up. They notoriously just hire from within. We need to go outside of our organization. So for the first time in 26 years, they hired outside of their organization for someone to run the Rockies.

1:35:07J. Kyle Mann:And the person that they hired was Paul DePodesta. Ooh. Yeah, Paul DePodesta. Checkered history. He's been out of baseball for 10 years and he most recently was with the Browns as their chief strategy officer where he decided, you know what we got to do? Let's sign Deshaun Watson to the worst contract in the history of the NFL.

1:35:27Bill Simmons:And trade picks for him.

1:35:29J. Kyle Mann:Yeah. Let's completely handcuff this organization forever. And the Rockies said, you know what? we just saw Moneyball, maybe Paul DePodesta, we can bring him in, he can do something here, he can figure this out. Except again, he hasn't been in baseball for a decade, so he needs to catch up to what's happening in modern day baseball.

1:35:47Bill Simmons:Yeah, so maybe somebody was trying to zag in the front office. Yeah. Where it's like, yeah, he was ruining the Browns, this seems stupid. And then somebody was like, yeah, but if he had been in baseball this whole time, maybe he'd be the single best guy running a baseball team, so we're buying low. Maybe he was just in the wrong sport. And they do it that way.

1:36:07J. Kyle Mann:It's the perfect division for things like this to happen. Because again, you have the Dodgers at the top who are going to dominate this division seemingly. You have the Padres who can threaten them. You have the Diamondbacks who seemed like they were a nice, fun, young, up-and-coming team a couple seasons ago and then kind of gone back to 500 more or less. So if you're the Rockies, I guess, why not try anything? anything. And if you're the Giants, why not, I guess, try to think outside the box when you fire your longtime manager.

1:36:37Bill Simmons:The problem is you're going against the Dodgers who basically have revenue streams from two massive countries happening at the same time, California and Japan. And then the Padres, so the Padres are for sale now and they're going to go for over 3 billion. I didn't realize this. They have a revenue of like$550 million a year because they're the only team in San Diego and they get, they just leverage everything and they just like print money. So those are the two teams you're competing against.

1:37:06J. Kyle Mann:They're in like the top 10 in spending. I think they're like second or third in attendance. Like they have money to spend. Yeah. They're just not spending it. They also just resigned their president of baseball operations, AJ Preller, who's like, you know, some people love him, some people hate him, but he always kind of goes for it. They resigned him. So that might've been kind of like a gift on the way out where his future was up in the air. And they said, you know what? This guy's been loyal to us. We're going to sell the team. Let's like lock him in or, you know, at least get a nice payday on the way out if they decide to fire him.

1:37:34Bill Simmons:People care about Dodgers, Padres here. The Dodger fans. The Padres as a rival and the Giants as a rival are real. I mean, the Giants is like a whole other level. But the Padres are a real rival. And that's something that kind of reemerged this decade, which has been pretty fun.

1:37:50J. Kyle Mann:But do they have to win to actually be a serious rival? Like, could they just be kind of like the annoying little brother for the Dodgers?

1:37:57Bill Simmons:Yeah, that's what they are. They're the annoying kind of kicking them under the table all the time.

1:38:02J. Kyle Mann:They play the game close, like best of 11. They get to like nine. And then it's like, all right, like we've had enough fun here. Like go back to where you were.

1:38:09Bill Simmons:What's your next one?

1:38:10J. Kyle Mann:All right. So here are noteworthy things that happened the first weekend of spring training. So this is like you show up to a cocktail party this weekend. You walk around and you say, hey, did you see? You see this? This is where we were supposed to start, but we got to number nine. So we can actually talk about it. Yeah, we'll figure it out. Anyways, so noteworthy things that happened the first week. Tony Clark, out as Major League Baseball Players Association union rep.

1:38:35Bill Simmons:A lot of fascinating things about this one, including the crazy beard he had.

1:38:39J. Kyle Mann:Yeah, he kind of secretly grew that long beard. He had to go T for a while. It kind of grew out and he decided, you know what, to keep going all white on the beard. Like, I kind of like it. I mean, I can't grow that beard, but I kind of like it for him. It's a good look for him.

1:38:53Bill Simmons:almost like an old hillbilly gym wrestling beard crossed with, I don't know what. So he had an affair with his sister-in-law who we had hired for the players union and that became the problem.

1:39:05J. Kyle Mann:Yeah, that, that was an issue. And as you mentioned, there's a looming lockout coming after the season, December 1st, if they don't meet, reach a new CBA, there will be a lockout. And it's kind of a bad look, I guess, to have your union rep be involved in extracurricular activities while you're trying to renegotiate a new CBA. Especially that was a sorted one too.

1:39:27Bill Simmons:Did we ever figure out which side of the sister law family was? I think it was the sister of his wife. But who knows? Allegedly. Oh, this is alleged. I'll just say alleged over and over again. But yeah, I think it was the sister.

1:39:41J. Kyle Mann:It's safe and it's one of those things that on the way out, knowing how delicate the situation was, no one was really like can we just like Tony before you go like can we clear up like brother's wife sister

1:39:56J. Kyle Mann:how exactly did this how did this work out here

1:39:59Bill Simmons:could have put odds on it that could have been fun I would have liked to have wagered on it but yeah so Tony's out he's a beloved Red Sox opponent because he hit the double in one of the ALCS games in 04 that would have been the go ahead run in extra innings but it bounced into the right field stance guy had to stop at third. It's the Tony Clark hit. So we've always enjoyed him after that because he did that for us.

1:40:25J. Kyle Mann:All right. So Tony Clark is out. Also happening. First game this weekend, Yankees had a sewage leak that took over their entire clubhouse. It was going into the team's store. They had to close off sections of the team's store. The clubhouse is all carpeting. That probably ruined all the carpeting. It started in the bathroom, just kind of bad plumbing situation. I don't know if this is like, has anything to do with the Rays played their, their entire season there last year, or the Yankees have their spring training, but it didn't affect them. They went on to win 20 to three against the Tigers. So that was kind of like a short-term annoyance.

1:40:59Bill Simmons:And they have some prospect that's thrown like 103. I don't know if you followed this guy.

1:41:04J. Kyle Mann:I don't understand arms, I guess like just human arms and how they work now, as opposed to how they used to work back in the day and how people are capable of just regularly hitting 103, 104. And, you know, they just go on living their lives until they blow out their elbow and have Tommy John and that's their career.

1:41:22Bill Simmons:But, but that's the thing. 99 was super fast. 20 years ago, 99 was like, wow, that guy's thrown 99. And now that feels pedestrian.

1:41:31J. Kyle Mann:I was impressed with a 97. If I saw like a 97, like the old scoreboard, there was actually like individual like light bulbs that are like orange or whatever color They were like, you'd wait, you'd turn and see like, wow, that one seemed like fast. You'd look up, you'd see how fast it was. It hits like 97. Like, wow. You're not here in Miami.

1:41:49Bill Simmons:You haven't heard the conspiracy theory that they jack up the radar radar gun a little bit. That has been out there.

1:41:56J. Kyle Mann:That's out there. I have one that I heard from the former Marlins team president who put it out there. When Brad Penny was on the mound, they would intentionally lower the speed of his pitches because they wanted to kind of like amp him up and get him to throw harder. So he'd be out there and he'd be throwing as hard as he could. And he'd look up after like every pitch. And it would say like 93 when it was really like 97, 98. And he'd just get pissed off. And he's like, I got to throw harder. He'd just throw even harder the next time.

1:42:26Bill Simmons:And then he blew out his elbow and it wasn't this far anymore. Yeah.

1:42:29J. Kyle Mann:Weird that it didn't last long term for Brad Penny.

1:42:32Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah, no rules on that.

1:42:34J. Kyle Mann:Okay. So there was a sewage leak. Weird triple plays have returned. I don't know if you saw this game. I think this is a game that involved like the Orioles or the one of the teams, I don't know where it was a hit. And then they decided to throw in. He decided to try to go for two, tag him out at second base. There's two runners on third base. They tag the guy out that went from second to third because they're both standing on the base. So the, you know, the back runner is automatically out. The lead runner then decides, you know what? I guess I'm out. So he walks off the base, triple play. So we're still trying to figure out the rules.

1:43:03J. Kyle Mann:These are kind of the things that happened in spring training. So you can talk to people about the weird triple play that happened. Also, home run leaders. Pete Alonzo already has two home runs. And I don't know if you saw this. It came out today. Daryl Strawberry. Have you seen this, Bill? Daryl Strawberry today, I believe it was in the New York Post, said Pete Alonzo is going to regret leaving the Mets. So Daryl Strawberry and Pete Alonzo are already kind of somewhat beefing. They then had to go back to Daryl Strawberry and get clarification on what he meant, where it was kind of like a half apology, where he's like, no, no, what I really meant was is I was in his position.

1:43:40J. Kyle Mann:And when I left and I could have been an all-time leader for an organization, that's a special thing. So I think he's going to look back one day and he's really going to regret leaving, not being an all-time Mets leader in something. Even though it seems like the Mets didn't really make that much of an effort to keep Pete Alonzo. Like they could have locked him up last season. They ended up not doing it. He was a free agent. He signs like a one-year deal to come back. I think there was an option that he opted out of. And this year, they also didn't give him money, which is weird because the Mets have just about as much money as everyone else.

1:44:12J. Kyle Mann:So if they really wanted Pete Alonzo, they could have easily signed Pete Alonzo. But they decided to kind of let him go, which is weird because I think the last five seasons, he's been top five in home runs every year. Here's the thing, though.

1:44:24Bill Simmons:It's not weird because this brings up one of my favorite theories. Okay. I don't know if I've introduced this on the pod. I think running backs and people who could only be a first base or DH, very similar to what happens to them in the market when they start hitting their early 30s. It doesn't seem like they want to tie up a ton of money with a guy who could only play that position who might actually get worse and then you're stuck. Versus if you get a wide receiver or a tight end or something, it's a little harder to find those guys. versus running back, you could just cycle in these second round, third round, fourth round picks.

1:45:04Bill Simmons:The Red Sox were in this situation with Casas, who's young. But it's like, well, if we double down on him, now we're kind of stuck and now we have no flexibility with this spot. I think teams like having the flexibility with first base DH is my take.

1:45:24J. Kyle Mann:Steven Cohen just seems kind of like a weird guy. Did you see he also came out and he said there will be no captains on this team.

1:45:30Bill Simmons:I did see that. I don't understand that.

1:45:32J. Kyle Mann:I don't either, but I don't understand it in that I never growing up considered captain a baseball thing.

1:45:40Bill Simmons:Do you think I should designate a captain for the ringer? And if I did, would Van quit if he wasn't named captain?

1:45:45J. Kyle Mann:I was going to say, I feel like Van has to be high on the list of who you might designate as captain of the ringer.

1:45:52Bill Simmons:He'd start calling himself the captain.

1:45:55J. Kyle Mann:He's on a lot of shows. If we're going to be on usage rate, Van's pretty high on. He really is. He could be a captain. I mean, Joel from Tailgate would be offended if he wasn't captain. Yeah, that could cause problems

1:46:06Bill Simmons:on the Tailgate show. Maybe that's why Steve Cohen didn't want a captain.

1:46:11J. Kyle Mann:He made it seem like, I think he said there will never be a captain as long as I own this team, which also seems like, why do we have to be so definitive on this? Like, captain's a dumb thing, but why are you taking such a strong stand?

1:46:21Bill Simmons:Why is he offended by captains? I don't know.

1:46:25J. Kyle Mann:I don't know.

1:46:25Bill Simmons:All right.

1:46:26J. Kyle Mann:Yeah. All right. So other early home run leaders, Aaron Judge has two home runs for the Yankees. So he's kind of, yeah, he's sticking on there strong. And here's kind of a fun thing that you can talk about with your friends. Clint Hurdle released a book this week. Really? And he, he also has been very, very active on Twitter this past week with his book coming out. It's called Clint Hurdle Hurdleisms, wit and wisdom from a lifetime in baseball.

1:46:55Bill Simmons:Wit and wisdoms.

1:46:57J. Kyle Mann:Yeah, wit and wisdoms. And it essentially is like not a poetry book per se, but it's a lot of just kind of like nonsenses. If you go on his Twitter account, you will see his last like five or 10 tweets have been things that have really just cut on. And it's just things that pop into his head that have absolutely, they're nonsensical. They're somewhat related to baseball. And he then will quote himself. Also, if you follow him, Clint Hurdle is following absolutely anyone out there. He followed me today. He's following anyone that interacts with him on Twitter. I don't know that he knows how Twitter works.

1:47:28J. Kyle Mann:But one tweet that really caught fire yesterday was him saying, quote, we can measure everything with radar guns and analytics, but none of these can measure guts and nuts. Guts and nuts? Guts and nuts can't be measured. There's no analytics for guts and nuts, according to Clint Hurdle.

1:47:48Bill Simmons:Well, you left out that this book is only 144 pages. Is it a book if it's under 200 pages? That's a borderline pamphlet.

1:47:55J. Kyle Mann:I think it's more, if you look at it, I can't figure out what it is, but when it says wit and wisdom, it seems as though it's just like not poetry, but it's nonsense. So like his last tweet was, don't take the heart out of the player. Don't take the heart out of the game. Let it be. Clint Hurdle.

1:48:17Bill Simmons:multitasking makes me multi-mediocre that's another Clint Hurdle

1:48:24J. Kyle Mann:I'm also pretty sure these hurdleisms are things that he took from other people why did we even need to do anything else they never care how much you know until they know how much you care Clint Hurdle so if you want and you want to get an early holiday gift or whatever Clint Hurdle wrote a book of hurdleisms that you can give. Tough love is still love, Clint Hurdle. There's no chance he invented tough love is still love. Just find it hard to believe that Clint is giving him credit for all of these sayings.

1:48:57Bill Simmons:Shower well is another one he has.

1:49:00J. Kyle Mann:What does that mean? I don't know.

1:49:04Bill Simmons:Shower well. Shower well. Shower is super important. Yeah. Oh man, I'm definitely getting this book now. It'd be funny if it became a bestseller.

1:49:13J. Kyle Mann:Clint Hurdle, Hurdle-isms. Go get your, I think it's available now. So go support Clint. All right. So now you're all caught up. Now you can tell people what happened this weekend in spring training baseball. And you'll feel like you're not out of the loop.

1:49:27Bill Simmons:This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like an expert coach, TaxAct offers step-by-step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit TaxAct.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See TaxAct.com for details. This episode is brought to you by Venmo. Supporting your team never gets old, but here's something new. You can now pay for your game day wings and rep your team at the same time.

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1:50:32J. Kyle Mann:So here's something that's going on. Big change in baseball this season. Something that everybody's going to be talking about. ABS automatic ball strike challenge. Are you familiar with this?

1:50:44Bill Simmons:I'm so glad you brought this up because I don't think people are going to be prepared for this and they're going to be watching the first game going. What's going on?

1:50:51J. Kyle Mann:There's a lot of confusion and it happens very quickly also, which is one of the good things about the situation. So they kind of tinkered with this last year in the all-star game some, which was kind of cool because they had a lot of the players mic'd up. And we saw it in a major league baseball game for the first time in the all-star game. They've been doing it in the minor leagues for a couple of seasons now. So the way that they're doing this is if you're unfamiliar with baseball and just kind of how this is going to work out, but you're super familiar with tennis, this will make sense. Think about in tennis where you see whether the ball is in or out and they go and they say there's a challenge and everybody looks up at the screen.

1:51:27J. Kyle Mann:And then within seconds, you see exactly where the ball hit. That's basically what they're doing with balls and strikes this year. They're giving each team two challenges, but if you win the challenge, then don't lose it. So you can keep challenging. Now, a lot of things are going to happen. There's only three people that can challenge. The people that can challenge are the pitcher, the catcher, and the hitter. So a coach can't challenge, a manager can't challenge. I guess they can yell to challenge the ball or whatever. A second baseman can't challenge. Only pitchers, catchers, and hitters can challenge.

1:51:59J. Kyle Mann:If you keep winning, you keep being able to challenge. Today, there was a game between the Blue Jays and the Yankees where they had one team, no lie, had nine or ten challenges. And it was getting ridiculous because they challenged the second pitch of the game to make it a 2-0 count, the first hitter of the game. Where I feel like during the season, we're not going to see that as much.

1:52:20Bill Simmons:We were at such a good pace. Like, why did they have to tinker with this?

1:52:24J. Kyle Mann:The good thing is, is it's quick. You see it instantly. So you see it and you move on. But I feel like there might be unintended consequences. And it's so precise. It'll say this pitch. You see the graphic. It goes by the side. You see exactly where it was. And it'll say this pitch missed by two tenths of an inch, which seems impossible to actually calculate. And when it's like that nitpicky, why don't we just kind of let it go and not hold up the game? But this is what we're in store for. Now, one of the situations that's going to happen as a result of this is there's going to be teams that are constantly doing this on the broadcast.

1:52:58J. Kyle Mann:They've removed the strike zone. So you can no longer see during games this season, the little box live where you see if it's a ball or a strike. I don't like that either. Now you go back to the world where you're dependent on the camera angles in each stadium being different. And you have no idea what's a ball or strike based on the angle, how far it is, you know, behind home plate. Is it further left the center? Is it further right the center? So you're going to have no idea in real time. You're going to have to kind of depend on this, but I'm assuming they did that because they want to protect, you know, the integrity of the game from the Astros of the world will probably have a TV in there where they were just watching the game and they see the ball in real time in and out.

1:53:36J. Kyle Mann:But here's another thing.

1:53:38Bill Simmons:I'm glad you pointed to the Astros on that. They still haven't got enough shit. Anyway, keep going.

1:53:43J. Kyle Mann:I hate the Astros. I got to tell you, there's no grudges I hold longer than baseball grudges, especially grudges from like my early childhood I'll really hold on to for absolutely no reason. Like there's this guy, Richie Lewis, who pitched for the Marlins when I was like six years old. And we went to this autograph signing at champ sports. He was like a relief pitcher or something guy sucks, but he went out there, he had his fancy Oakley's on. He was one of like the four guys, the first season of the team that was signing autographs. And he decided not to sign autographs for certain things. And he didn't sign autographs for me because I guess the line to close or whatever.

1:54:19J. Kyle Mann:And I remember my dad as a young boy, my dad said to me, Billy, no matter how successful you are in life, never be a Richie Lewis who's too good to spend time with the people because one day people aren't going to care about you. They're not going to care about Richie Lewis. And you're going to wish that you had signed that autograph. So never be Richie Lewis. So Richie Lewis, wherever you are out there, screw you, buddy. I haven't forgotten this thing that happened.

1:54:44Bill Simmons:This is weird. That was also a Clint Hurdle-ism.

1:54:47J. Kyle Mann:Was it? Yeah. Never be Richie Lewis? Never be Richie Lewis.

1:54:50Bill Simmons:I don't know how that happened.

1:54:52J. Kyle Mann:Classic Hurdle. So here are some unintended consequences I think of ABS, right? If you have a situation, you no longer have the strike zone, so you're not going to see that. You also have catchers whose entire career is based on framing and tricking umpires into thinking this is a strike when it's actually a ball. So you have Alejandro Kirk from Toronto. He just signed a long-term deal. He's fine. You have Austin Wells, who's a master framer. He'll be fine because he's good offensively. But you have the Austin Hedges of the world in Cleveland, who's not great offensively, but he's loved by pitchers because he's great at framing and he's great at turning balls that are either right on the zone and is a ball into a called strike or just, you know, holding it firm and not moving too much so that the actual strikes are called strikes.

1:55:38J. Kyle Mann:I feel like the Austin Hedges of the world, the Players Association shouldn't have allowed this because we now are going to be losing Austin Hedges is because if you're hitting 160 and your skill is framing and the hitter can just challenge every time he knows it's a ball that you're making it a strike there's no purpose for you in Major League Baseball this sounds like a

1:55:58Bill Simmons:baseball movie ~~~ only last week He's the best pitch framer in the league. They changed the rules on him. Now he's got to figure out how to make an impact. So it also meets a girl.

1:56:09J. Kyle Mann:I was going to say in this movie, does he like, they kick him out and then he has to kind of like, he's down on his luck. He's now like, I don't know, working like at a pizza place or something. And then, you know, something happens and someone calls him for one last chance. So then there's like the scene where he's like in the cages. He's like, man, I got to just get above the Mendoza line. Like if I just hit 203, like I need something else.

1:56:30Bill Simmons:It can't just be the framing anymore. Yeah. He learns to be a better baseball player. All right.

1:56:34J. Kyle Mann:So there's that. And then here's another unintended consequence that I wonder if we're going to see. This could lead the umpires to kind of treating a lot of this the same way NFL referees treat things where it's like, okay, there's holding on every call, but I can't call everything a hold. Right. So I wonder if you have a catcher that's back there that says, you know what? I really want to show up this umpire today. Like I'm going to challenge this. I wonder if he then starts kind of like, let's see if you challenge every play. Like, let's see how many of these you're willing to challenge in a row on borderline pitches.

1:57:08J. Kyle Mann:Are you going to be doing this six times in the third inning, six times in the fourth inning? We have a situation where we could have vengeful unfires here who are coming after teams because they're not liking being shown up because they're only human, right? Yeah. They don't like that they're going to be shown up. I, someone who, I don't know how you feel about this. I kind of like the human element of baseball. I liked when you can kind of have things, you didn't have replay that would overturn absolutely everything.

1:57:32Bill Simmons:It's how I feel about basketball. I think it's okay that the, we have this with goaltending now in basketball where that you can't be reviewed.

1:57:39J. Kyle Mann:There was crazy goaltending though.

1:57:39Bill Simmons:It can't be reviewed and it's like, it's okay, we'll get over it. Whereas like, we're like painstakingly reviewing these other parts of the game. And I don't know, I don't like it.

1:57:48J. Kyle Mann:Well, they stole from us in doing that. They don't think of the unintended consequences. When they went to the fact that they have the replay review and you can't come out and argue it or automatic ejection. We lost the Bobby Cox's of the world. We lost the Lou Piniella's of the world. We lost the theatrics that made baseball fun. The guys that would go out there and they'd cover home plate with the dirt. You'd have the minor leagues took it too far as they always do, where you have kind of the coaches crawling around, you know, on the mound throwing raws and bats like grenades. Like that was that was too much.

1:58:18J. Kyle Mann:Granted like that. We went a little bit too far in the minor leagues, but they're trying to get called up to the show too.

1:58:23Bill Simmons:So the posture was good for those where I liked when the managers would go up and they do this with their arms so they can get really close, but it's not physical. And you just do this.

1:58:33J. Kyle Mann:You don't bump, you move your head a lot. You kind of go like this, maybe a little, maybe some spit doesn't come out a little spittle, like just a little spit, but an unintentional spit. So you don't get ejected from the spit. And then you also had that as a tool to kind of light a fire under your guys. You know, when you go out there, you're like, look, I know, I know you're right. My guys are struggling here. So I just call you MF for this and say this about your mother or whatever. Just say the right things to kind of get yourself tossed out. And the guy's like, wow, man, coach really has my back.

1:59:02J. Kyle Mann:I'm going to go out there and we're going to, we're going to rally around, you know, Richie Lewis blew a game for us. We're going to rally around this and we're going to kind of come together. We're going to win this game.

1:59:10Bill Simmons:And then we're going to shower. Well, yeah. And then we're going to shower.

1:59:13J. Kyle Mann:Well,

1:59:14Bill Simmons:What else do we have? We have eight minutes left.

1:59:18J. Kyle Mann:Wow. Okay. We got to go fast. All right. So there's some new bodies. Minute 52. We're cranking.

1:59:23Bill Simmons:Well, we did a lot of fantasy baseball.

1:59:25J. Kyle Mann:New bodies. All right. So what are you thinking? It's not new places. It's not new faces. There's plenty of those, but new bodies in Major League Baseball. Roman Anthony, number one new body that's out there.

1:59:37Bill Simmons:So new body watch is a big fantasy baseball thing.

1:59:40J. Kyle Mann:You got to keep an eye on this. So he comes in. he gains 15 to 20 pounds of muscle. However, he recently had a stomach bug where he lost 10 to 12 pounds because of the stomach bug. So we're coming in maybe somewhere between three and seven pounds heavier in muscle than he did last season. Keep an eye on Roman Anthony. See what's going on with him. I mean, this is my favorite Red Sox player.

2:00:01Bill Simmons:So I'm concerned. I don't like the cycle of, I put on a lot of weight. Oh, I hurt my back. I hurt this other thing. And then the next spring training where it's like, I put on too much weight last year. I needed to like sleek down and now I feel better. That's what I hope doesn't happen with Roman Anthony.

2:00:19J. Kyle Mann:Well, the thing is, so here's someone that you should be kind of concerned about. Eli De La Cruz put on 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason. Eli De La Cruz is a guy who is a five to a player. He can hit for power, but he could already hit for power. He had a stretch, I think last year from July until September where he didn't hit a home run. So he decided, I need to kind of put on some weight. But he also went down from 60 plus stolen bases two years ago to 30 stolen bases last year. Now he's added 15 pounds of muscle. You have to think that's not going to help him with his stolen bases. He also switched managers at one point where they were like, run whenever you want.

2:00:56J. Kyle Mann:And then last year, the manager was like, you have the green light, but you don't always have to go. So this is one where the 15 pounds may not work in his favor. Then we can skip some of the other guys. We don't need to know everybody. Keep an eye on Vladimir Guerrero.

2:01:08Bill Simmons:It should be a website though. we should be able to look this up. Leader body pounds. Yeah, new body pounds. I would click on that.

2:01:15J. Kyle Mann:Okay, so new bodies, two more that we'll go to. One of them, Vladimir Guerrero. Vladimir Guerrero on Instagram, not too long ago, put out a before picture and then he put an after picture and it said seven weeks in the lab. And there was no noticeable body difference that I could tell between picture one and picture two. One of them, he was just kind of down like this. The other one, he was posing. So whatever sags he may have had kind of like didn't exist anymore when you kind of strike the pose. So I'm not exactly sure whether he gained or lost weight in the offseason. I know that he signed a big contract and he's taken care of.

2:01:50J. Kyle Mann:He also could have just been making fun of this situation and showing like, hey, I'm back. Doesn't matter. Oh, like a parody. A parody account.

2:01:56Bill Simmons:Well, also like using the lab is what makes me nervous because sometimes that ties in with the 15 pound weight gain. Probably wouldn't use the word lab.

2:02:05J. Kyle Mann:15 pounds is not the most severe weight gain we have, that goes to Zach Veen in the Colorado Rockies organization, who gained 43 pounds this offseason in muscle. He comes in with a career one home run. He gained 43 pounds in muscle. He credits this to getting sober and he's no longer dealing with substance abuse issues, but he comes in 43 pounds heavier than last season. And in case you're wondering how will this play out, he has already hit a 468 foot home run this spring. So it seems as though his 43 pounds of muscle are being used productively.

2:02:40Bill Simmons:So that broke the record of Kumail Nanjiani was the last person who put on 43 pounds in three months of muscle. Remember that?

2:02:48J. Kyle Mann:We don't talk about that enough. Remember that? We're all just...

2:02:52Bill Simmons:He just was suddenly jacked. Now he's like doing direct TV commercials so he can look jacked.

2:02:58J. Kyle Mann:Almost. And like, I don't, I don't, I'm sure he's a very lovely man, right? I don't know this, but almost disgustingly jacked, if we're going to be honest. It's almost a turnoff, if I'm going to be honest. It's too muscular, especially where he was coming from. Like, I get it. His jaw is now like ultra defined also. It's just, it's a little bit too much.

2:03:16Bill Simmons:I don't think muscle and comedy really necessarily mixes. I felt that way since Joe Piscopo way back when. The muscle is, I don't need my comedians to be jacked.

2:03:25J. Kyle Mann:You need to be more relatable, I feel like. You know, like be like the every guy. Be like the Jonah Hill of the world.

2:03:30Bill Simmons:Like Vlad Guerrero, just posting the same photo of himself and claiming he was in the lab.

2:03:35J. Kyle Mann:Exactly right. Okay, here's one that you're going to hate, the World Baseball Classic. This is something that's going to be going on in spring training. You need to keep an eye on just because in the game that I was telling you about, there's injuries. There's also weird roster situations going on. But for the next like three weeks, some teams are going to be without their team, essentially. So today the Yankees played against the Blue Jays and between the two teams, including minor leaguers, 24 players from the two teams combined were leaving to go beyond World Baseball Classic rosters, including the entire starting infield for the Blue Jays.

2:04:09J. Kyle Mann:You have teams that also exist just because they have to, I guess, this late in the game. But the Puerto Rican team, almost no one got insured. So half of their team can't even play. So any stars that you were looking forward to seeing from Puerto Rico, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, they didn't get insurance. So they are ineligible for the World Baseball Classic. It got to the point that Bad Bunny came in and offered to pay Carlos Correa's insurance to play in the World Baseball Classic. And they were like, no, Bad Bunny, thank you for being very patriotic. But that's not how this works.

2:04:47J. Kyle Mann:You can't pay for their insurance. Now, they also famously, Puerto Rico, lost Edwin Diaz last year, or last World Baseball Classic in 2023 when he was celebrating a walk-off win and then ended up missing the season. He bounced back ultimately. But World Baseball Classic, it's going to be exciting for about two weeks. but there's a lot of weird things that go on. There's potential injury situations. Tariq Skubal is going to pitch for the U.S., but he's only going to pitch one start for the U.S., and the start that he's going to have for the U.S. is not being saved for the later rounds. It's going to be in game two of the tournament against Great Britain, and then he's going to be going back to the Dodgers, which seems like a waste of Tariq Skubal, but they're very deep in pitching.

2:05:29J. Kyle Mann:You have Paul Skeen, so I think that what they're doing is just getting a ton of aces, having them pitch one game each, and then sending them back to their team. So that's, I guess, your very quick World Baseball Classic refresher. Oh, and Shohei Otani, who won the last World Baseball Classic in that moment where he pitched against Mike Trout. It was like, wow, what are we going to do here? One run game, top of the ninth inning. Is Trout going to tie it? Who's going to win? He ends up striking him out. It becomes his famous moment. Japan goes on, wins, beats the United States 3-2. Shohei Otani will not be pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

2:06:02J. Kyle Mann:He will only be hitting for Team Japan. But he will be pitching this year for the Dodgers. So while he's not pitching in games, he needs to be throwing bullpen sessions with the Japanese team to get ready to pitch for the Dodgers once the season starts. So the World Baseball Classic is kind of, you know, confusing things a little bit. But it's fun if you kind of can get into it for two weeks.

2:06:24Bill Simmons:Otani, minus 135 for MVP on Fandle.

2:06:27J. Kyle Mann:Really?

2:06:28Bill Simmons:Feels like anytime he's around even, that's just a bet. Because he's two guys. who that's I mean how does anyone beat him you'd have to have like the greatest season of the last

2:06:39J. Kyle Mann:10 years to trump that it's his first it's his first season the Dodgers are actually going to get a full season of the two Otanis where he gets the 760 million or whatever it was which by the way I get it when it's two players but I giving people 600 million 500 million 700 million now who are only playing one position, I don't get. I get that Otani reset the market as to what the annual value is, but he's one of one where he's two players, essentially.

2:07:11Bill Simmons:Well, this is why we're going to have a long, ugly labor dispute.

2:07:15J. Kyle Mann:Yeah. Because I think the owners are like,

2:07:18Bill Simmons:what are we doing? Kyle Tucker just got$240 million. What are we doing?

2:07:23J. Kyle Mann:Well, that's why he was in what's the West doing? Kyle Tucker. I don't understand. They can't lock out. Like baseball, with the momentum that they have, they need to figure it out. Because if they get a lockout here...

2:07:33Bill Simmons:Never underestimate baseball being dumb. This has been my entire life. All right.

2:07:39J. Kyle Mann:I want to re-award the manager of the year from last year if we can. Are we allowed to retroactively... To re-litigate it?

2:07:45Bill Simmons:Interesting. I don't know if it's allowed, but let's do it anyway.

2:07:48J. Kyle Mann:Okay. So last year's National League manager of the year was Pat Murphy of the Brewers. Yeah. Here's something that you can talk about. I'm starting to think that the National League manager of the year should have been Rob Thompson of the Phillies. The reason that I think it should have been Rob Thompson of the Phillies is the Phillies were 30 games over 500. They won the East very easily. The next closest team was the Mets who had a meltdown. They finished 13 games behind the Phillies. The reason I would give him manager of the year now retroactively is the Phillies appear to be in shambles.

2:08:20J. Kyle Mann:They had Kyle Schwarber who was runner up for the MVP. They re-signed him. But outside of that and some pieces here and there that they've added, Bryce Harper is feuding with Dave Dombrowski, who is the president of baseball operations. Dave Dombrowski, at the end of the season, said that Bryce Harper's season, while he was an all-star, was not elite. Bryce Harper then got upset by this. He said, I thought that we were supposed to keep things in-house. Why is he going out? Why is he saying this publicly? Bryce Harper, who loves social media now, who does all kinds of things where he has his weird diet and he cooks all these different things, put up something on Twitter in December where he was in the lab, if you will.

2:08:55J. Kyle Mann:He was in the batting cages, wearing a shirt that said, not elite. on it. So he was clearly taking a shot at Dave Dombrowski. It has since been resolved, allegedly, where Bryce Harper says that he and Dave Dombrowski have spoken and it's water under the bridge. They're going to move on. But you have one of your highest paid players and superstars here feuding with the president of baseball operations, who I also hate, by the way, just because, again, childhood grudge. Dave Dombrowski came in. We win the World Series in 97, 98. He trades absolutely everyone. Then he goes, how do you feel about Dave Dombrowski?

2:09:26J. Kyle Mann:He helped you get a World Series. Did you feel positively?

2:09:29Bill Simmons:He did. He kind of like mortgaged everything, but we did get the World Series. So he technically did his job and did what he promised he would do. But I wouldn't say he left the team in great shape.

2:09:40J. Kyle Mann:That's what he does, though. He kind of leaves like the coverage barren after he'll win a World Series.

2:09:45Bill Simmons:Honestly, he's like an Adam McKay movie. It's like the Dave Dombrowski play where he just, he has this objective and hopefully you get it. And if you don't get it, you're screwed afterwards. Okay. Interesting way to put it.

2:09:57J. Kyle Mann:never considered him the Adam McKay of baseball. Also going on with the Phillies and why Rob Thompson should have won manager of the year. Nick Castellanos essentially got kicked off of the team. So he last year got in a disagreement with his manager in a game in June. He hits a grand slam. They win a game. He comes to Miami. He's from Miami. His fans or family in the crowd watching the game. They pull him from the game, give him a scheduled day off. And he decides to come back with a beer into the dugout. I like that. Where he's then going to go and he's going to call out Rob and he's going to give him a piece of his mind.

2:10:29J. Kyle Mann:Now, other Phillies teammates say, what are you doing? They take the beer away from him. They sent him back. He's then benched the next game. No one hears any of this went on until about a week ago when they mysteriously released Nick Castellanos. They owed him$20 million. He ends up signing with the Padres for the league minimum. You're wondering what exactly happened here. Nick Castellanos puts out a post on Instagram where it's a handwritten note explaining what happened. And then he like labeled it the Miami incident, which the majority of people had no clue even happened. So he outed himself on the Miami incident.

2:11:02J. Kyle Mann:Then all the players are asked about this. This Rob Thompson somehow has his president of baseball operations feuding with one of their biggest stars. He has a player getting benched in the middle of a game, coming in with a beer, fighting with him, kept that under wraps for six months until they could quietly release him. And then he apologized on his own about the situation. I guess fearing that he was going to be outed. This guy did an incredible job because all of this, while they finished 30 games over 500 and easily won their division.

2:11:31Bill Simmons:And had to deal with all the crazy Philly fans and people like the Bundo and Shield and Chris Ryan just bitching about their team every day.

2:11:39J. Kyle Mann:I hate Philly fans. That's another one. We don't need to get into that today though, I suppose.

2:11:43Bill Simmons:I don't even think Philly fans like Philly fans though.

2:11:46J. Kyle Mann:I have a theory and I wonder how you feel this. I feel like if you actually love your team, you have to hate your team, right? But no one else can hate your team. Like you should be able to pick apart your team and get frustrated and just absolutely hate them. You hate your star players. You hate everyone. But if someone else comes in like, oh, your team sucks. Like my team doesn't suck. What are you talking about? And then you go after them.

2:12:09Bill Simmons:Yeah.

2:12:09J. Kyle Mann:But to actually love your team, I feel like you can't actually be happy.

2:12:12Bill Simmons:You just described every single NBA team Reddit page where they bitch about their team constantly. But then if a national person comes in and says something, it's like, how dare he

2:12:22J. Kyle Mann:how dare you made that Brandon Ingram comment that's the theory behind Dave Dombrowski he was just saying this and being critical of his guys to try to light a fire under him which I don't buy Dave Dombrowski sucks that guy's the worst

2:12:34Bill Simmons:give us a last thing and then we get to go

2:12:36J. Kyle Mann:alright last thing and this is something that if you say out there people are going to kind of hold on to we'll burn through the other things last thing watch out for the Pirates the Pirates finished last season 71 and 91 okay so this is a team that seemingly you know with the brewers in their division with the cubs in their division they're not going to go on a serious run but they added a first baseman and rhino her from the padres they added a second baseman and brandon lowe with 30 home runs last season i had him on my keeper team are you keeping him for next year but not because he's the national

2:13:10Bill Simmons:league we lost him uh he crossed over into the other portal we're out how do you how do you handle that so like if you have a keeper you don't get like a compensatory pick or something

2:13:21J. Kyle Mann:he got wiped out in the war he's just done wow yeah that's sad it's gonna miss him yeah not really all right so they got brandon low they got marcelo zuna who hits home runs they got jake bangham who has who's a power hitter last year they only had pitching but they didn't really have any hitting so you had a situation where paul skeins had horrible run support he had a horrible you know wins loss record because he was never getting any runs to support him this year they they upgraded the offense. They have the top prospect in baseball and Connor Griffin shortstop last year he had 333 over 900 OPS 21 home runs across different levels in minor league baseball 65 stolen bases.

2:13:57J. Kyle Mann:Wow. This is one of those where honestly I didn't want to tell you about him and I don't know if you're the same way where I feel like I find someone that certain people know about. I wanted I'm worried that people in my league might see this and then say you know what we need to go after this Connor Griffin and then they might get him. Also, didn't mention him earlier because I was saving him until the end. Connor Griffin also leads Major League Baseball in spring training home runs. He has two home runs this season already. He's cranking it. Keep an eye on Connor Griffin. Paul Skeens is there.

2:14:26J. Kyle Mann:Mitch Keller is there. He signed an extension. Jared Jones is coming back from Tommy John surgery. The rotation is going to look good. They also have arguably the best pitching prospect in baseball, Bubba Chandler, who had a 31 to four strikeout to walk ratio in 31 innings last season. And his name's Bubba, which is a great baseball name. So huge win. Keep, keep an eye on these pirates. I'm telling you, they're going to be pesky. I'm not going to say that they're going to win the central, but this is a wild card team. If I've ever seen one bill,

2:14:52Bill Simmons:80 plus wins on Fando plus one 12. You can get frisky and go 90 plus wins at plus five 20 or take them for the division at plus six 50. See, I like having the one random team in the national league to root for every year. I usually bet on one team because I don't, otherwise I wouldn't follow the national league at all. but if I have a team I'm like all right I'll adopt this team this year so maybe that'll be my team the Pirates push you get skeins yeah I used to do

2:15:19J. Kyle Mann:that with the AL just because I'm an NL guy so I used to say like I could I could root for you know this team and it was like if I was in that city that year like if I went to a game in Baltimore I'm like I'm gonna root for the Orioles this year you know I'm gonna root for the A's because I like Cess but it's also keep an eye on the A's we don't have time but keep an eye on the A's no the A's the A's are loaded yeah and they have a bunch of young dudes what are they have a lot of young guys I just wonder the thing is is that the park that they play in that minor league park, it's great for their hitters, but horrendous for their pitchers because the ball just flies out of there.

2:15:48J. Kyle Mann:Yeah.

2:15:48Bill Simmons:They're over under for wins is 75 and a half.

2:15:51J. Kyle Mann:What were they doing? By the way, we don't need to get into this today, but they moved out of Oakland to move to Las Vegas where they don't have a stadium in place yet. They're in Sacramento, just in purgatory. Why, why did they do this? Why are we here?

2:16:05Bill Simmons:I there's things that happen in baseball and it's been going on my whole life that there's just no explanation for it's like they basically didn't want to take shit for being in oakland anymore when they were going to leave so they're like we'll just go over here it's like a divorced dad moving out and just grabbing any apartment just to get away from the house for two years

2:16:23J. Kyle Mann:very strange but they're stuck in it they're stuck in this house they don't have a new house

2:16:27Bill Simmons:yeah i'm also dubious of baseball in vegas but that's a story for another time i'm positive i know that it's going to be indoors it's not going to be outdoors with people baking, but I'm just not positive baseball in Vegas makes sense.

2:16:40J. Kyle Mann:The tourists are going to come after the pool parties and after the sphere to go watch the A's play?

2:16:45Bill Simmons:I don't. I don't think it's like the NBA where it's like Anthony Edwards is in town. Wemby's in town. I don't think baseball works that way in the same kind of thing. A lot of times it's the Royals and it's a Wednesday.

2:16:59J. Kyle Mann:Also, if they're in town, they're in town for three games. We'll go to the third game. Then something came up. I'm not going to do that.

2:17:05Bill Simmons:I'm dubious of this. you're going to come back for the start of the season. We'll do some sort of preview. So this is another thing with baseball. I never know when the season starts anymore. Now it's like March 25th range.

2:17:19J. Kyle Mann:So yeah, it's like last week of March. I know the thing is they also have like a weird thing. I need to see because I'm not sure if they have the international game that they start on that they have some seasons where it's like here's an international game in Japan and then they come back and then those same teams go and play like two more spring training games after games that actually counted and then the season really starts. But it's like last week of March.

2:17:44Bill Simmons:It starts on March 25th. Yankees, San Francisco taking place in San Francisco.

2:17:50J. Kyle Mann:Okay.

2:17:51Bill Simmons:Yeah.

2:17:52J. Kyle Mann:There you go. That's on Netflix, right? That was one of the things. Baseball's on Netflix this year. It's on Peacock. It's all over the place.

2:17:59Bill Simmons:It's all over the place. It's like every sport now, part of the fun of following the sport is trying to figure out what channel it's on for the first five minutes. Yeah. I'm just figuring out the NBA in mid-February, end of February. It's like, oh, it's Monday. It's a peacock day. It's just starting to set my head. All right, Billy Gill.

2:18:16J. Kyle Mann:It's Prime Fridays.

2:18:17Bill Simmons:Billy Gill, great to see you. Thanks.

2:18:19J. Kyle Mann:Thanks for having me.

2:18:21Bill Simmons:All right, that's it for the podcast. Don't forget, rewatchables. We did Crazy Stupid Love, me, Mina, and Van. If you missed it, if you didn't see that, that one's up there. For this podcast, thanks to Kyle and Tate. Thanks to Billy. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. And I'm going to be back here on Thursday with one more episode. See you then.

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2:20:10Billy Gil:It's a season two playoff race with TGL presented by SoFi. Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Jupiter Lynx versus Boston Common Golf. Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Los Angeles Golf Club versus New York Golf Club. Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern, the Bay Golf Club versus Jupiter Lynx. Keep up, it's golf. Watch on ESPN, ESPN2, and the ESPN app.